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Panada (Made in Five Minutes)
Set a little water on the fire with a glassful of white wine, some sugar, and a scrape of nutmeg and lemon peel; meanwhile grate some crumbs of bread. The moment the mixture boils up, keep it still on the fire, put the crumbs in, and let it boil as fast as it can. When of a proper thickness to drink, take it off.
A drinking-thickness bread gruel, sweetened and spiced, meant to be swallowed easily by someone with no appetite. The whole thing rests on judging the crumb-to-liquid ratio by eye, since the original gives no measurements at all.
- QuantitiesNothing is measured beyond "a glassful" of wine, which in period usage means a wine glass of roughly 2 to 4 fl oz. For one serving, about a cup of water to that glass of wine, a teaspoon or two of sugar, and crumbs added a spoonful at a time is the sensible reading.
- The hingeAdd the crumbs the instant the liquid boils, and keep it at a hard boil, as the original directs. Crumbs dropped into liquid below boiling tend to clump rather than disperse, and a fast boil helps break them down to a uniform pap.
- BreadUse dry, close-crumbed white bread grated fine, not fresh soft bread and not commercial dried breadcrumbs, which are usually coarser and often seasoned. Day-old bread grated on the fine side of a box grater is closest to what is meant.
- "Proper thickness to drink"The target is pourable, like a thin cream soup, not a spoonable porridge. It thickens noticeably as it cools, so take it off the heat while it still looks slightly loose.
- Lemon peel and nutmegPare the peel in strips with no white pith and fish them out before serving; grated zest will leave gritty specks in something intended to be drunk. A scrape of nutmeg means a few passes on a fine grater, not a measured pinch.
- The wineA dry or off-dry white with no oak. Boiling drives off much but not all of the alcohol, which matters if the drink is going to someone unwell or medicated; water or a little apple juice carries the sweetness without it.
- YieldOn the quantities suggested above, about a cupful, one invalid's portion; the original specifies no yield. It does not hold or reheat well, since the bread keeps absorbing liquid and sets to a paste.
Panada belongs to a long European tradition of bread cooked to softness in liquid as food for the sick, the very young and the very old, and the name carries the Latin panis, bread. Sweetened, wine-laced versions appear in English household books from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where wine was regarded as strengthening rather than merely pleasant, and nutmeg and lemon peel recur among the flavourings of sickroom drinks. The editor's note places it among the book's invalid food, which reflects a period assumption that convalescents needed food that was liquid, bland, warm and easily swallowed, prepared at short notice by whoever was nursing at home. The five-minute promise in the title is the point: this is something a household could produce quickly and at any hour.