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Chicken Panada

A thickened chicken soup made with bread crumbs and milk, served in a custard cup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Chicken Panada

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Panada

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Roast the chicken and remove the breasts, or use more meat if preferred.

  2. Chop the chicken as finely as possible, pound it, and pass it through a colander.

Make the panada

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in tepid milk, squeeze nearly dry, and mix with the chicken.

  2. Thin the mixture with chicken broth or boiling water as needed.

  3. For convalescents, add a little finely minced parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve in a custard cup to be eaten with a spoon.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + parsleytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,314 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the dish once finely pounded.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and bind with the chicken to give a soft, smooth texture.
Milk
Moistens the bread so it breaks down and blends into the mixture.
Chicken broth
Thins the mixture to a spoonable consistency and adds savory flavor.

The step that matters

Squeezing the soaked bread. Bread that stays too wet makes the mixture loose and watery, so it will not hold together. Squeezing it nearly dry lets the crumbs bind the chicken, and the broth can then be added to adjust the thickness.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, milk):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, milk. 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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