Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Rice Croquettes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the mixture
Boil the rice in sweet milk with salt until soft.
Stir in the butter, beaten eggs, and enough cornmeal to form a thick mixture.
Shape the mixture into croquettes.
Fry
Drop the croquettes into hot lard and fry until golden brown.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Rice + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,374 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,645 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rice
- Cooked soft in milk to form the thick, bulky body of the croquettes.
- Beaten eggs
- Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
- Butter
- Adds richness and softness to the mixture.
- Cornmeal
- Thickens the mixture so it holds its shape for frying.
- Sweet milk
- Cooks with the rice to make it soft and creamy.
The step that matters
Fry in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the croquettes absorb grease and turn soggy before a golden crust forms. Frying in properly hot fat sets the outside quickly, so the interior stays tender and the surface browns evenly.
“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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