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Rice Balls

Sweet fried rice balls coated in breadcrumbs and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Rice Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Pour 3 pints of boiling milk over ½ pound of rice and add 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Boil until the rice is tender, then let it cool.

  3. Form the cooled rice into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Beat 2 eggs in a bowl and roll the rice balls in the egg.

  2. Coat the balls in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the balls in lard until golden brown.

  4. Drain on paper and serve dusted with sifted sugar.

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. Egg + breadtop 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 swells as it cooks, giving the balls their body.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture and richness to the filling.
Eggs
Act as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the rice balls.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the cooked rice.

The step that matters

Boil until the rice is tender. Rice must fully hydrate and soften before shaping; undercooked grains stay firm and crack or fall apart when formed and fried, while the starch needs to cool enough to hold its shape.

“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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