Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Panada

A thickened chicken soup made by pounding cooked chicken with broth, salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Chicken Panada

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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the chicken in water until nearly cooked.

  2. Remove the skin and cut the white meat off when cold.

  3. Pound the meat in a mortar with a little of the boiling water.

  4. Season with salt, nutmeg, and a small amount of lemon peel.

  5. Boil gently until it reaches a drinkable, thick consistency.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Meat + nutmegtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,656 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Chicken + nutmegtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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, which thickens as the pounded meat simmers.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oil for brightness in a small amount.

The step that matters

Boil gently until thick. Boiling too hard can toughen the finely pounded chicken and break the mixture unevenly. Gentle heat lets the meat release its proteins slowly, so the soup thickens smoothly and stays tender.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, meat, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes