Name: Chicken Panada
Ingredients: cold chicken; weak broth or milk and water; coarse sea salt; white pepper; nutmeg; lemon peel; light milk bread

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Panada

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cut delicate slices of cold chicken.
Pound the white meat in a mortar with a little weak broth or milk and water until it forms a paste.
Season with coarse sea salt, white pepper, grated nutmeg, and a small piece of lemon peel.
Mix with broth or milk and water to a cream-like consistency.
Boil gently for a few minutes.
Serve with two or three strips of toasted light milk bread, 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.

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.

Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,375 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,389 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,997 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, milk, nutmeg, lemon, bread):

Cinnamonfits better
Marjoramfits better
Cardamomfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, nutmeg, lemon, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.