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Rice Croquettes

Rice croquettes are small, hard balls of cold boiled rice seasoned with lemon and salt, fried in lard and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Rice Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Squeeze the juice of one lemon over a plate of cold boiled rice.

  2. Season the rice with coarse sea salt and work it into small, hard balls using your hands.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls quickly in very hot lard until golden.

  2. Arrange the croquettes on a dish and sift powdered sugar over them.

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 + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled rice
Cooled, starchy rice holds its shape when shaped and forms a firm, crisp-edged crust.
Lard
Hot fat conducts heat quickly, browning the outside while keeping the inside moist.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the bland rice.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a light finish on the golden croquettes.

The step that matters

Fry the balls quickly in very hot lard. If the lard is not very hot, the croquettes absorb fat and turn greasy before a golden crust forms. Frying quickly in hot fat seals the surface, so the rice inside stays moist and the outside browns evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar. 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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