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Panada

A simple bread soup made by boiling bread with mace, then blending with water, butter, nutmeg, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Panada

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the bread slices with the mace in water for no more than 2 minutes.

  2. Remove the bread and finely bruise it in a bowl.

  3. Mix in enough of the water to achieve a proper consistency.

  4. Add a bit of fresh butter, grate in some nutmeg, and sweeten to taste.

  5. If desired, add wine but do not boil it with the water and bread.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Slices of bread
Form the body of the soup, absorbing liquid and thickening it when bruised.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the savoury broth and bread.

The step that matters

Boil the bread for no more than 2 minutes. Prolonged boiling breaks down the bread's structure too far, turning it gluey and dissolving its texture. A brief simmer softens the bread while keeping enough body to bruise into a proper consistency.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, nutmeg, sugar. 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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