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Panada

Panada is a thickened soup made with bread crumbs, mace, water, and optional 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

Prepare

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine the mace, bread crumb, and water; bring to a boil for 2 minutes.

  2. Remove the bread crumb, and rub it finely in a basin.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix in enough warm water to achieve a smooth consistency, discarding any excess water.

  2. Sweeten to taste, and add butter and nutmeg 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumb
Thickens the liquid and gives the soup its body as the starch absorbs water.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder, silkier mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Rubbing the bread crumb finely. Breaking the softened crumb into very fine particles helps it blend into a smooth consistency rather than leaving lumps. Adding warm water gradually then loosens it evenly.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mace, bread, butter, nutmeg, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mace, 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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