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Panada
Panada is a preparation of bread which is used by the French in making forcemeats, and is much superior to the grated crumbs ordinarily used in English kitchens. The flavouring required for the whole of the forcemeat is generally put into the panada, and this flavouring is therefore a matter of considerable importance. Panada is made as follows. Slice the crumb of two French rolls into a basin, and pour over it as much boiling milk or broth as will cover it. Let it soak for half an hour, or until it is quite moist, then press it with a plate to squeeze out the superfluous liquid; afterwards put it into a cloth, and wring it thoroughly. Put an ounce of fresh butter into an enamelled saucepan, with a little pepper and salt, half a blade of mace, powdered, or a little grated nutmeg, half a tea-spoonful of powdered thyme, two table-spoonfuls of minced parsley, half a dozen-chopped mushrooms, and a slice of lean ham, cut into dice; a bay-leaf may be added or not. Stew these ingredients over the fire for a minute or two, then add the soaked bread and two table-spoonfuls of good white sauce or gravy. Stir the mixture over a gentle fire, until it forms a dry smooth paste and leaves the sides of the saucepan, then mix in the unbeaten yolks of two eggs; put the preparation between two plates, and when cool it is ready for use. If preferred, instead of mixing the herbs and seasoning with the panada, the gravy or sauce may be simmered with the seasoning, until it is highly flavoured, and then strained over the bread. In making the forcemeat, equal quantities should be taken of whatever meat is to be used, panada, and calf's udder, or butter, and these should be pounded together in a mortar, until they are thoroughly blended. When udder is used, it should be well boiled with as much water as will cover it, allowed to cool, then trimmed, rubbed through a fine sieve, and added to the forcemeat. The panada is to be stirred over the fire until the mixture leaves the saucepan.
A panada is a bound, seasoned bread paste used as the binder in a quenelle or forcemeat — the French answer to a handful of dry crumbs. The recipe is a component, not a finished dish, and its whole purpose is to carry the seasoning for whatever it is folded into.
- The hinge: dry it out properlyThe paste must be stirred over gentle heat until it visibly leaves the sides of the pan in one mass. A wet panada gives a slack forcemeat that weeps and falls apart when poached.
- French rollsThese were small, light white rolls with a fine crumb. Two of them might yield something in the region of 4-5 oz (about 120-140 g) of crumb once the crust is cut away, though roll sizes varied; any plain white bread with a soft, close crumb will do, but not sourdough or anything with large holes.
- Wringing the breadWringing in a cloth is not optional fussiness. Squeeze until no more liquid runs, or the bread will keep releasing milk into the finished forcemeat.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of nutmeg, sold whole as "blades" or ground. Blades vary in size, but half a blade powdered is on the order of an eighth of a teaspoon of ground mace; the nutmeg alternative the recipe offers is fine.
- Enamelled saucepanSpecified because bare iron and copper discoloured egg and milk mixtures. Any modern nonreactive pan — stainless, enamelled cast iron, nonstick — serves the same purpose.
- The yolksStir them in off the direct heat, working quickly. The paste is hot enough to thicken them and they will scramble into visible threads if the pan goes back on a flame.
- Calf's udderA standard nineteenth-century enrichment for quenelles, prized because it pounded to a smooth, bland fat. It is effectively unobtainable now; the recipe's own alternative, an equal weight of butter, is what any modern cook would use.
- Cooling between two platesPressing the paste flat between plates cools it fast and keeps a skin from forming. Cover and refrigerate instead, and use within a day — it contains cooked ham, mushrooms and egg.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; as written it probably makes somewhere in the region of 8-10 oz of panada, to be used in equal weight with the meat or fish and with the calf's udder or butter, as the recipe directs.
Panada takes its name from the Latin panis, bread, and in its oldest form it was simply bread boiled in broth — invalid food and nursery food across southern Europe long before it became a technical term in professional cookery. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s, French kitchen practice had turned it into a precise component: the starch element that gives a forcemeat or quenelle enough body to hold its shape when poached, in the same family as the flour-and-milk and choux-paste panadas used for the same job. The faintly barbed remark about "the grated crumbs ordinarily used in English kitchens" is characteristic of the period, when English cookery writing was busy absorbing French method and rarely missed a chance to say so. The instruction to concentrate all the seasoning in the panada rather than the meat is sound reasoning as well as tradition — bread carries aromatics far better than pounded flesh does.