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Dessert

Rice Balls

Sweet rice balls made with milk, butter, eggs, lemon peel, served with raspberry sauce or fried and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rice Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice mixture

  1. Cook the rice in milk until tender.

  2. Beat the butter until creamy, then add the eggs and grated lemon peel.

  3. Stir in the rice until it is stiff enough to form balls.

Shape, coat and cook

  1. Boil the rice balls in milk and serve with raspberry sauce.

  2. Roll the balls in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry until golden, and serve dusted with 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Cooked grains soften and release starch that helps bind the mixture into balls.
Eggs
Egg proteins set when heated, binding the mixture and adding richness.
Butter
Fat adds richness and a tender texture to the mixture.
Milk
Cooks the rice until tender and keeps the balls moist.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the finished balls.

The step that matters

Stir in the rice until it is stiff enough to form balls. Cooked rice starch and egg proteins bind the mixture as it firms. If it stays wet, the balls can loosen and break apart when boiled and coated.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, egg, lemon, sauce, bread):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, egg, lemon, sauce, 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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