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Pot Au Feu

A traditional French beef broth made with beef, root vegetables, herbs, and spices simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pot Au Feu

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large pot, combine the beef and cold water.

  2. Add the salt, carrots, turnip, parsnip, leeks, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, celery, garlic, cabbage, onion, cloves, and peppercorns.

  3. If using, wrap the marrow bone in a cloth or cabbage leaf to prevent spillage.

Simmer

  1. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for several hours until the meat is tender.

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.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the rich meat and savory flavor that the broth is built around.
Leeks
Add a mild, sweet onion-like flavor that softens during long simmering.
Cabbage
Adds sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks down.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and color to the broth and vegetables.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a gentle simmer. Boiling hard toughens meat proteins and clouds the broth. A slow, gentle simmer over several hours breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and the broth clear.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, parsnip, leek, parsley, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Fennelfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, parsnip, leek, parsley, thyme. 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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