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Panada

Panada is a thickened milk soup made with stale bread crumbs, milk, water, butter, and optional flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Panada

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Panada

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the panada

  1. Grate the stale bread crumbs.

  2. Pour a little boiling water over the grated crumbs.

  3. Strain off the water.

  4. Place the crumbs in a saucepan with the milk.

  5. Boil without stirring until smooth.

  6. Sweeten the panada.

  7. Flavor the panada with cinnamon, almond, or sherry if desired.

Make the soup

  1. In another saucepan, combine the toast, salt, butter, and water.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Beat the yolks of two eggs with a little milk.

  4. Add butter to the mixture.

  5. Pour the egg mixture into the panada while stirring.

  6. Add more milk if the panada is too thick.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and swell, thickening the panada into a soft body.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the bread thickens as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Pouring the egg mixture into the panada while stirring. Egg proteins set when heated, so they can scramble into lumps. Stirring as the mixture is added disperses the egg evenly and keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, sherry. 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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