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Panada (Stale rolls tablespoon sugar)
2 stale rolls 1 tablespoon sugar Boiling water Grated nutmeg Toast the rolls very brown, but do not scorch them; break into a bowl; sprinkle with sugar and a little grated nutmeg and pour over them sufficient boiling water to moisten thoroughly. If desired, a little flavoring may be added. 1 stale tea biscuit Boiling water Salt
A sickroom food rather than a dish for the table: toasted bread softened in boiling water, sweetened and spiced. It comes together in about five minutes and needs almost nothing but attention to the toasting.
- The hinge is the toastThe whole flavour comes from browning the bread deeply without any bitterness — dark amber, not black. Scorched crumb turns the finished panada acrid, and there is nothing else in the bowl to hide behind.
- What a roll means hereMost likely a plain white dinner or breakfast roll, a day or two old so it slices and toasts without tearing. Two such rolls would come to something in the region of 3 to 4 oz of bread; enriched or seeded modern rolls change the character entirely.
- "Sufficient boiling water"The recipe gives no quantity: add a little at a time, by the spoonful, until the bread is thoroughly moistened. The target is a thick, spoonable porridge, not a soup — the bread keeps swelling for a minute or two after the water goes in, so wait before judging.
- NutmegGrate it fresh over the bowl. Pre-ground nutmeg has lost most of its volatile oil and will read as dusty in a dish this plain.
- The second listThe trailing "1 stale tea biscuit, boiling water, salt" appears to be a savoury variant of the same idea, presumably made the same way with salt in place of sugar and nutmeg, though no method is given for it. In American usage of the period a tea biscuit is generally a small plain soft biscuit, closer to a scone than to a cracker.
- "A little flavoring"Left undefined; vanilla or lemon extract would suit, and some period sickroom cookery used a spoonful of wine or sherry. Add it after the water, off the heat, so it is not driven off.
- YieldProbably a single serving. It is best eaten hot, as it stiffens as it cools.
Panada is one of the oldest surviving forms of invalid cookery — the name comes through Spanish and Italian from Latin panis, bread, and versions of bread softened in broth or water appear in European cookery writing for centuries before this book. Panada belonged to a familiar group of American sickroom dishes alongside beef tea, gruel, arrowroot and toast water: bland, warm, easy to swallow, and made from whatever stale bread the household already had. The sweetened, nutmegged version suited children and convalescents; the salted biscuit version offered a savoury alternative.