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Drink

Panada, Made in Five Minutes

Panada is a simple bread-based drink made with water, wine, sugar, nutmeg, lemon peel, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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, Made in Five Minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquid

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

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat.

Thicken and finish

  1. Once boiling, add the bread crumbs and let it boil rapidly.

  2. Remove from heat when it reaches a drinkable 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.

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. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. White wine + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together827 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. White wine + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and swell as they cook, thickening the mixture into a light body.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps rounds out the wine's sharpness.

The step that matters

Remove from heat at a drinkable thickness. Bread crumb starch thickens as it swells and continues to thicken as the mixture cools. Taking it off the heat at the right point keeps the panada fluid enough to drink rather than becoming stiff and pasty.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against white 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.

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