Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Panada

A broth-based chicken dish thickened with bread, seasoned with salt, nutmeg, lemon peel, and sweetened with wine or rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 three-quarters cooked.

  2. Remove the skin and cut the meat off the bones.

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

  4. Season the paste with coarse sea salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  5. Boil the mixture gently for a few minutes until it thickens.

Make the sauce and serve

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

  2. Bring to a boil, then add grated bread and boil quickly until thick enough to drink.

  3. Serve with a little rum and butter instead of wine 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.

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. Lemon + winetop 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. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the paste once pounded and cooked.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and thickens the sauce as it boils.
Wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the sauce, and can be replaced with rum and butter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the wine and lemon peel.

The step that matters

Boil the bread sauce quickly until thick. Grated bread only thickens once it has been boiled long enough to swell and absorb the liquid. Stopping too early leaves the drink thin, while overcooking can make it stiff and pasty.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, lemon, wine, sugar, 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 chicken panada recipes

Soup 4 See all 46 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes