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Panada

Panada is a sweet bread soup made with water, bread crumbs, mace, sugar, and optional butter, raisins, or nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Simmer the bread

  1. Combine the water, bread crumbs, and mace in a clean saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil for 2 minutes.

Mash and thin

  1. Remove the bread and mash it finely in a basin.

  2. Mix the mashed bread with enough warm water to achieve a smooth consistency.

Sweeten and finish

  1. Sweeten to taste.

  2. Optionally, add butter, raisins, or nutmeg.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  5. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb water and swell into a thick, soft body for the soup.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the water.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the plain bread flavor.

The step that matters

Mix the mashed bread with warm water. Bread starch swells as it absorbs liquid, so adding the warm water gradually while mashing helps prevent lumps and gives a smooth texture.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, mace, sugar, butter, raisin, nutmeg. 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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