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Ce Qui Entre Dans Le Pot-au-feu

A traditional French beef stew made with beef, bones, vegetables, and coarse sea salt simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip 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 ↓

Ce Qui Entre Dans Le Pot-au-feu

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. Add the coarse sea salt, carrots, onion, leeks, celery, clove, turnips, and parsnips.

  3. Pierce the clove into the onion and add it to the pot.

  4. 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. Leek + turniptop 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. Leek + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat flavor and becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Bones
Release gelatin and savory depth into the broth as they simmer.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Leeks
Contribute a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soften into the broth during simmering.
Parsnips
Add earthy sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the meat is tender. A rolling boil toughens meat and makes the broth cloudy, while a gentle simmer lets connective tissue slowly break down into gelatin, yielding tender meat and a clear, rich broth.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, leek, celery, turnip, parsnip. 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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