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Rice Cutlets

A dish of minced meat mixed with cooked rice, shaped into cutlets, breaded, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Rice Cutlets

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix the minced cold meat and cooked rice together in a bowl.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and optional nutmeg or lemon peel.

  3. If the meat is very lean, add 2 oz of fat or beef suet.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Dip each cutlet in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets in hot fat until golden brown.

  2. Serve arranged in a circle and garnish with fried parsley.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Rice + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the main body of the cutlet and provides its savory flavor.
Cooked rice
Adds bulk and a soft texture that lightens the mixture.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps the bread crumb coating adhere.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown crust when fried.
Fat
Carries heat for frying and adds richness and moisture to lean meat.

The step that matters

Fry the cutlets in hot fat until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the crumb coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before it browns. Hot fat quickly sets the crust and keeps the inside moist.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, rice, pepper, egg, bread, butter, beef):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, rice, pepper, egg, bread, butter, beef. 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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