No. 121

Panada of Flour and Milk, Bread-Crumbs, and Pate a Choux

Panade de Farine et de Lait, Mie de Pain et Pate a Choux

Flour and Milk.—Put in a saucepan half pound of flour, also four eggs and work well together adding some salt, and dilute with six to eight gills of milk; stir it over the fire and remove at the first boil, pour it into a bowl, cover with a buttered paper and let get cold.

Bread-crumbs.—Soak four ounces of bread-crumbs in a pint of water, squeeze out all the liquid and put it into a saucepan with a little salt and three gills of milk; thicken it on the fire without ceasing to beat, and stir it up with a spoon until it detaches itself from the pan, then set it in a bowl, cover with buttered paper and put away to cool.

Pate a Choux.—Put one pint of water or broth in a saucepan with two ounces of butter, set it on the fire, remove it aside at the first boil, and incorporate into it three quarters of a pound of sifted flour, mix well and dry on a slow fire till the paste detaches itself from the saucepan and let cool slightly, then stir into it gradually two whole eggs and four yolks, set it away in a cool place with a buttered paper over, for further use.

← No. 120 Panada Cream Frangipane Elementary Methods No. 122 Wheat and Rice Flour Panada →

For the Modern Kitchen

These are not dishes but binders — the three standard panades Ranhofer used to give body to quenelles, forcemeats and mousseline farces. Each is cooked until stiff, chilled, and then pounded into ground meat or fish.

The gillA gill is half a cup, so six to eight gills of milk is 3 to 4 cups. Ranhofer gives a range rather than a fixed quantity; starting at the lower end and adding more if the batter is too thick to stir smoothly is the safer way to work it.
What makes or breaks itThe bread-crumb panada and the pate a choux are both stirred until the mass detaches itself from the pan, as Ranhofer directs; the flour-and-milk one is taken off at the first boil. An underdried panada carries free water into the forcemeat, and the quenelles may fall apart in the poaching liquid.
Flour-and-milk versionHalf a pound of flour is about 1 3/4 cups; whisk the eggs and flour to a smooth paste before thinning with the milk or you will chase lumps. "Remove at the first boil" means the instant it bubbles — this one is a thick pouring batter, not a paste, and further cooking will make it gluey.
"Mie de pain"Not dry breadcrumbs from a canister. This is the soft white interior crumb of a day-old loaf, torn up; 4 oz is roughly 2 to 3 loosely packed cups. Modern packaged crumbs are already dried and will turn to paste rather than soaking and squeezing.
The choux is savoryNo sugar, and the ratio here — 3/4 lb flour, about 2 2/3 cups, to one pint of liquid — is far drier than pastry choux. It is meant to be a stiff paste for binding, so do not judge it against a batter that pipes into éclairs. Ranhofer allows either water or broth.
Buttered paperA round of buttered parchment laid directly on the surface, to stop a skin forming while it cools. Plastic wrap pressed to the surface does the same thing.
Yield and keepingThe three batches are not the same size — the bread-crumb one is the smallest, the flour-and-milk the largest — and all are scaled for professional quantities of forcemeat. Halve or quarter them for home use, and keep the finished panada refrigerated and use within a day or two — cooked flour, milk and egg is a hospitable medium.

A Little History

Panade takes its name from bread (Latin panis), and the oldest form is simply bread stewed in liquid — the invalid's dish and the child's supper. By the nineteenth century French professional kitchens had turned the word into a technical term for a cooked starch paste whose job is to hold moisture and fat in suspension inside a forcemeat, so that pounded veal, chicken or pike could be poached as a light quenelle rather than a dense dumpling. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, groups them among his "Elementary Methods." The technique survives largely unchanged in modern charcuterie and in the milk-soaked bread of a good meatball.