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Rice Ralls

Rice Ralls are fried rice balls made with milk, cinnamon, lemon peel, eggs, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,137 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rice Ralls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice

  1. Pour 3 pints of boiling milk over ½ lb of rice in a pot.

  2. Add a little cinnamon and lemon peel, and boil until the rice is tender.

  3. Sweeten the mixture and let it cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the cooled rice into balls.

  2. Beat 2 eggs in a bowl.

  3. Roll the rice balls in the beaten eggs, then in grated bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in lard until golden brown.

  2. Drain on paper and serve covered 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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Swells and softens in the milk, giving the balls a starchy body that holds their shape.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture and a creamy texture.
Eggs
Act as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the rice balls.
Grated bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.
Sugar
Sweetens the rice and adds a sweet finish on the sifted topping.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in lard until golden brown. Frying at a steady heat browns the bread crumb coating into a crisp crust while the rice inside warms through. Oil that is too cool lets the coating soak up fat and turn greasy, while overly hot fat browns the outside before the centre heats.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, cinnamon, sugar, egg, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, cinnamon, sugar, egg, bread. 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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