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Chicken Panada

A thickened chicken paste made by boiling chicken, pounding it, and seasoning with salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken in 1 quart of water until nearly cooked.

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

Make the paste

  1. Pound the chicken in a mortar with a little of the boiling water until it forms a paste.

  2. Season with a pinch of coarse sea salt, a grate of nutmeg, and a small piece of lemon peel.

  3. Boil gently for a few minutes until it reaches your desired thickness.

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 protein that gives the paste its body and structure once pounded and cooked.
Water
Cooks the chicken gently and its boiling liquid loosens the pounded meat into a smooth paste.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the mild chicken.

The step that matters

Boil gently for a few minutes until it reaches your desired thickness.. Boiling too hard can toughen the proteins and make the paste grainy, while gentle heat lets it thicken smoothly as the proteins set and the starches and moisture settle.

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.

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