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Chicken Panada

A chicken paste made by pounding chicken breast with boiling water, salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel, then boiled until thick.

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

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken breast.

  2. Pound the meat in a mortar to a paste, adding a little of the water it was boiled in.

Season and thicken

  1. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  2. Boil the mixture for a few minutes until it thickens, but do not let it become too thin.

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

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

  3. 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 breast
Provides the protein that, once pounded and cooked, sets into the paste's body.
Water from boiling chicken
Adds moisture so the pounded meat forms a smooth, spreadable paste.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the mixture.
Lemon peel
Adds bright, aromatic citrus flavour that lifts the mild chicken.

The step that matters

Boiling until it thickens. Heat sets the chicken protein and the mixture thickens as it cooks. Boiling too long or too hard can over-tighten it and make it dry or rubbery, so it should be watched and stopped once it thickens but is still soft and spreadable.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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