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Drink

Egg Panada

Egg Panada is a sweet egg drink made with egg yolk, sugar, cream, butter, crackers, boiling water, nutmeg, wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and nutmeg 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 ↓

Egg Panada

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg yolk until frothy.

  2. Mix in sugar, cream, butter, and crushed crackers.

  3. Pour boiling water over the mixture.

  4. Add nutmeg and wine or brandy to taste.

  5. Stir well and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cream + buttertop 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. Cream + nutmegtop 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

Egg yolk
Adds richness and body, and helps the drink feel smooth and creamy.
Crackers
Thicken the mixture as they soften and absorb liquid, giving the panada its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the richness of the yolk, cream and butter.
Butter
Adds fat, contributing softness and a rounded, rich mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, softening the texture of the drink.

The step that matters

Pour boiling water over the mixture. Boiling water is needed to cook and thicken the egg yolk gently while the crackers soften. Stirring well as it is added helps prevent the yolk from scrambling into lumps.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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