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Fried Rice Balls

Fried rice balls made from cooked rice, milk, sugar, egg, bread crumbs, and fried in fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Rice Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice in several waters.

  2. Place the rice in a saucepan.

  3. Cover the rice with water.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Pour the water away.

  6. Add the milk.

  7. Simmer for 20 minutes.

  8. Remove from heat.

  9. Add the egg yolk and sugar.

  10. Stir for 3 minutes.

  11. Turn the mixture onto a plate.

  12. Let the mixture cool completely.

Shape and coat

  1. Flour a board lightly.

  2. Roll the mixture into small balls.

  3. Beat the egg white on a plate.

  4. Roll the balls in the beaten egg white.

  5. Place bread crumbs on a sheet of paper.

  6. Roll each ball in the bread crumbs.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat enough dripping or clarified fat in a stew-pan to cover the balls.

  2. When the fat is hot, drop the balls in one by one.

  3. Brown the balls for 2 minutes.

  4. Remove the balls.

  5. Place them on a sheet of paper for a minute.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Starch that absorbs the milk and sets into a firm, cohesive mass when cooled.
Milk
Liquid that cooks into the rice, giving it a soft, creamy, moist texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the browned coating develop flavour and colour.
Egg
The yolk enriches and binds the rice; the white gives a sticky layer for the crumbs to cling to.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely before shaping. Warm rice is soft and sticky, so the balls can break or stick to the board. Cooling lets the starch firm up so the balls hold their shape through coating and frying.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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