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Panada

Panada is a thick bread soup made from crumbled loaf, water, butter, wine, nutmeg, and optional sugar, cream, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Panada

Why it works: Nutmeg and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Panada

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Slice the crumb of a penny loaf very thin.

  2. Put the crumbs into a saucepan with 1 pint of water and boil until very soft and clear.

  3. Beat the mixture finely with a fork.

  4. Grate in a little nutmeg.

  5. Add the butter, wine, and sugar.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep soup dish.

  2. Add cream and salt if preferred.

  3. Omit wine and sugar 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 + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Penny loaf crumb
Forms the body of the soup as it softens and thickens in the water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Wine
Adds acidity and a lightly fruity flavour to the soup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the wine and nutmeg.

The step that matters

Boil until very soft and clear. The bread must be cooked long enough to fully soften and break down; under-cooked crumb stays lumpy and gives the soup a pasty texture.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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