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Drink

Cracker Panada

A sweetened beverage made by boiling crackers in water and straining the liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Cracker Panada

Ingredients

Directions

Make the panada

  1. Break the hard crackers into pieces.

  2. Boil the cracker pieces in 1 quart of water for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let stand for 3 to 4 minutes.

Strain and season

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine wire sieve.

  2. Season the liquid with sugar to taste.

  3. For added flavor, stir in a little lye and nutmeg if desired.

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. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Hard crackers
Their starch thickens the boiling water and gives the drink body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the plain, starchy liquid.

The step that matters

Boiling for 15 minutes. Starch in the crackers must be fully cooked and broken down in hot water to thicken the liquid and soften the pieces. A shorter boil leaves the drink thin and grainy, so the full simmer time matters before straining.

“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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