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Croquettes of Rice

Croquettes of rice are fried balls made from boiled rice, lemon rind, milk, sugar, bitter almonds, filled with apricot jam and coated in powdered biscuit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Croquettes of Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice mixture

  1. Boil the rice, lemon rind, milk, sugar, and bitter almonds together until well cooked.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then form it into balls.

Fill and coat

  1. Scoop out the center of each ball and fill it with apricot jam.

  2. Roll the balls in powdered biscuit.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot lard until golden brown.

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. Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Almond + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Rice + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked in milk, it swells and softens into a thick mass that holds the croquette's shape.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to give a soft, moist body and a creamy interior.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture brown when fried.
Eggs
Listed in the ingredients but not used in any step, so no role is given.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice until well cooked. Rice must absorb the milk and soften fully, or the mixture stays grainy and will not hold together when shaped. Cooling before shaping lets it firm up enough to handle.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, sugar, almond, apricot, egg, biscuit):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, sugar, almond, apricot, egg, biscuit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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