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French Pot Au Feu

A French beef stew made with beef, vegetables, and broth, served with bread.

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 ↓

French Pot Au Feu

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine 1 gallon of water and 4 pounds of beef.

  2. Add 3 teaspoons of coarse sea salt, 1 teaspoon of black pepper, 4 onions, 4 leeks, 2 carrots, 2 turnips, and 3 cloves.

  3. Set the pot on the stove and bring to a boil. Skim off any scum that forms.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 4 hours, adding a little cold water occasionally to keep the broth clear.

Serve

  1. Slice bread and place it in a tureen. Pour the broth over the bread, adding some vegetables.

  2. Serve the meat separately with the remaining vegetables on the side.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Releases flavour and gelatin into the broth as it simmers slowly, while the meat itself stays tender.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they cook down.
Leeks
Contribute a mild, sweet onion flavour to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the broth.
Bread
Soaks up the hot broth, giving a soft texture when served in the tureen.

The step that matters

Skimming and simmering gently. Boiling hard breaks up the scum and fat into the liquid, making the broth cloudy. Keeping it at a gentle simmer and skimming early lets proteins and impurities rise and be removed, so the broth stays clear.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, leek, carrot, turnip, clove, bread):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, leek, carrot, turnip, clove, bread. 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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