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Pot-au-feu

A French beef soup made by slow boiling beef with vegetables and serving over bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef in an earthen fire-proof pot.

  2. Add water, carrot, turnips, leeks, celery, and burnt onion.

  3. Season the mixture.

  4. Boil slowly for at least 5 hours, skimming occasionally.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

  2. Serve the soup over thin slices of bread.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump of beef
Provides the main meat and rich flavor that the long simmer draws into the broth.
Leeks
Add a mild sweet, savory aroma to the broth as they cook slowly.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the broth during the long simmer.
Turnips
Contribute a mildly sweet, earthy flavor that rounds out the broth.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for at least 5 hours, skimming occasionally. A gentle simmer keeps the beef tender and the broth clear; a rolling boil emulsifies fat and cloudies the liquid. Skimming removes foam and excess fat that would otherwise dull the flavor.

Swap the onion

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

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

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