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Rice Fritters

Rice fritters are fried cakes made from cooked rice, eggs, onions, sage, pepper, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Rice Fritters

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rice Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Simmer the rice in 5 cups of water until tender.

  2. Let the rice cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Mix the cooled rice with eggs, chopped onions, sage, pepper, and salt.

  2. Form the mixture into small cakes.

  3. Fry the cakes in a little butter until golden brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a pan for the gravy.

  2. Add flour to the melted butter to make a roux.

  3. Gradually stir in water until desired consistency is reached.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the cakes, giving them a soft, tender body once cooked.
Eggs
Bind the rice and onions together so the cakes hold their shape when fried.
Flour
Forms a roux with melted butter that thickens the gravy as it is loosened with water.
Butter
Fries the cakes to golden brown and enriches the gravy with fat and flavor.

The step that matters

Form the mixture into small cakes. If the rice mixture is too wet or loose, the cakes may fall apart in the pan. Cooling the rice first firms the mixture and helps the eggs set around it, so the cakes hold together during frying.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, sage, pepper, butter, flour. 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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