Skip to main content
Main

Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are fried rolls made from cooked rice, milk, butter, egg, parsley, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Reheat the rice in a double boiler with enough milk to soften it.

  2. Add the butter, salt, cayenne, and beaten egg.

  3. Cook until the egg thickens.

  4. Stir in the chopped parsley.

  5. Spread the mixture on a plate to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the cooled mixture into rolls.

  2. Dip the rolls in breadcrumbs, beaten egg, and breadcrumbs again.

  3. Fry in deep fat until golden brown.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  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. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked rice
Forms the bulk of the croquette and sets into a soft, cohesive mass.
Egg
Binds the mixture as it cooks and thickens, holding the rolls together.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the rice mixture.
Milk
Moistens the rice so it softens and blends into a workable mixture.

The step that matters

Cook until the egg thickens. Egg proteins set when heated, binding the rice. Undercooked egg leaves the mixture loose and hard to shape, while the coating can separate during frying.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, pepper, 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.

More rice croquettes recipes

You might also like