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Rice Cakes

Rice cakes are fried balls made from Carolina rice, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon zest, and coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and angelica match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 189 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the rice base

  1. Soak the rice in warm water for 3 hours, then drain almost dry.

  2. Pour in the milk and simmer until the rice is very tender.

  3. Add sugar, butter, and salt, and simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Whisk the egg yolks and add them cautiously to the mixture off the heat.

  5. Return to heat and stir until thickened, avoiding boiling.

  6. Remove from heat and stir in lemon zest, then cool in a buttered dish.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, flour your hands and shape into oval or pear-shaped balls.

  2. Dip each ball in beaten egg, then coat with breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry in lard until golden brown and serve garnished with angelica.

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. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Butter + milktop 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. Rice + angelicatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Carolina rice
Starch that softens into a thick, tender base that holds the shape of the cakes.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture and add richness and a smooth, set texture when heated gently.
Milk
Cooks with the rice to form a creamy, moist base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender interior.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown when fried.
Egg whites
Bind the breadcrumb coating so it adheres evenly to the cakes.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks off the heat. If yolks meet direct heat too quickly they scramble and turn grainy. Adding them off the heat, then returning to gentle heat without boiling, lets them thicken the base smoothly.

Swap the angelica

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

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