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French Pot Au Feu

A French beef stew with vegetables, simmered for hours and 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, 3 cloves, and 1 burnt onion or 3 tablespoons of coloring.

  3. Set the pot on the fire and skim off any scum that forms.

  4. Place the pot to the side of the fire and occasionally add a drop of cold water to keep the broth clear.

  5. Boil for 4 hours.

Serve

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

  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
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, so the meat becomes tender and flavours the broth.
Onions
Burnt onion or coloring gives the broth its deep amber color and a toasty aroma.
Leeks
Add sweet, mild aromatic flavour to the broth as they simmer.
Bread
Soaks up the hot broth, becoming soft and absorbent in the tureen.

The step that matters

Skimming and keeping the broth off a hard boil. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that cloud the broth and taste bitter if left in. Keeping the pot at a gentle simmer, with occasional cold water, lets fat and particles settle so the broth stays clear.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, onion, leek, carrot, turnip, 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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