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Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are balls of cooked rice mixed with milk, sugar, eggs, butter, and flavoring, filled with marmalade, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rice

  1. Soak the rice in water for 3‑4 hours, then drain.

  2. In a basin, combine the rice, milk, and salt.

  3. Place the basin in a steamer and cook until the rice is thoroughly done.

  4. Carefully stir in the sugar, egg yolks, butter, and flavoring.

Form and fry

  1. Once cool enough to handle, form the mixture into balls.

  2. Press your thumb into the center of each ball and insert a small amount of marmalade or jelly, then close the rice around it.

  3. Roll the balls in beaten eggs and then in bread crumbs.

  4. Fry in boiling hot lard 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. 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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

Rice
Forms the starchy body of the croquette, setting into a firm, cohesive mass as it cooks.
Milk
Cooks into the rice, adding moisture and creaminess to the mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the browning of the outer coating during frying.
Egg yolks
Enrich the rice mixture and help bind it as it cools and firms.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer texture in the filling.
Beaten eggs
Act as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere evenly to each ball.

The step that matters

Cook the rice until thoroughly done. Rice that is not fully softened will stay firm and grainy, so the mixture will not bind well or form smooth balls. Steaming gently and evenly gives the starch time to gelatinize fully before shaping.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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