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Potage Au Panade

A French soup made by stewing bread and butter in water, then adding a yolk and cream mixture.

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

Potage Au Panade

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a stewpan, combine thin slices of bread and butter with enough water to soak them.

  2. Add ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt and let it stew for about 45 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 3 or 4 eggs with ½ cup of cream.

  2. When the soup is boiling, pour in the egg and cream mixture.

  3. Remove from heat and serve.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaks up liquid and breaks down into the body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup as they set, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the set of the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Pouring in the egg and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if the soup is at a hard boil. Pour in gradually while stirring and keep the heat controlled so the soup turns silky rather than curdled.

“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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