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Dessert

Bread Panada

Bread Panada is a sweet bread dish made by boiling bread crumbs in water, sugar, wine, lemon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Bread Panada

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Bring 1 ½ cups of water and 1 tablespoon of white sugar to a boil in a pot.

  2. Just before boiling, add 2 tablespoons of stale white bread crumbs and stir well.

  3. Let it boil for 3 to 4 minutes.

  4. Add ⅓ cup of white wine, 1 grated lemon, and a little nutmeg.

  5. Boil once more, then remove from heat and cover until needed.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Bread + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together827 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. White wine + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale white bread crumbs
Thicken the liquid as they absorb water and swell, giving the panada its body.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the wine and lemon.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic flavor to the sauce.
Grated lemon
Adds bright citrus aroma and acidity.

The step that matters

Add the bread crumbs just before boiling. Adding crumbs to liquid that is already boiling can cause lumps, because the starch and crumbs hydrate unevenly. Stirring well as they go in helps them swell smoothly and thicken evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, bread, white wine, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, white wine, lemon. 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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