Skip to main content
Bread

Panada

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

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

Panada

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine water, wine, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in grated bread and boil rapidly until thick.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Grated bread
Absorbs liquid as it boils, swelling and thickening the soup into a body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the wine and lemon.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the liquid base.
Lemon peel
Contributes bright citrus aroma from its fragrant oils.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly until thick. Grated bread needs enough heat to swell fully as it absorbs the liquid. Rapid boiling also evaporates some liquid, concentrating the soup. Too gentle a simmer leaves it thin and under-thickened.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

More bread soup recipes

Chicken 4 See all 87 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesNut BreadNut Bread109 recipesWheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipes