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Panada, Made in Jive Minutes

Panada is a bread soup made with water, white wine, sugar, nutmeg, lemon peel, and bread crumbs.

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

Panada, Made in Jive Minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Bring water, white wine, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Grate some crumbs of bread.

Thicken and finish

  1. Once the mixture boils, add the bread crumbs and stir continuously.

  2. Cook until the mixture thickens enough to drink, then remove from heat.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 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. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. White wine + breadtop 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and swell, thickening the mixture into a soup-like body.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the dish.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps round out the flavour of the liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring while the crumbs are added. Bread crumbs dropped into boiling liquid can clump and scorch on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring spreads them evenly so the mixture thickens smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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