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Pot Au Feu Henry IV

A French stew of fowl, beef, marrow bone, vegetables, and spices simmered in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pot Au Feu Henry IV

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and wash the fowl, beef, and marrow bone.

  2. Chop the carrots, onions, leeks, celery, and cabbage.

  3. Wrap the mixed spices in a cloth.

Make the broth

  1. Boil the fowl and beef.

  2. Remove the water.

  3. Add 2 gallons of cold water, salt, and pepper.

  4. Cover and bring to a boil.

  5. Add the carrots, onions, and spice bundle.

  6. Simmer for 1 hour.

  7. Add the celery, parsley, and leeks tied together.

  8. Boil for another 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add whole potatoes and quartered cabbage.

  2. Slowly boil for another 30 minutes or until cooked.

  3. Remove the meat, fowl, and bone.

  4. Place vegetables on a platter.

  5. Strain the broth into a soup tureen.

  6. Skim some fat from the broth.

  7. Serve with toasted dried 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl
Gives the broth its rich, savory body as it simmers slowly.
Lean beef
Releases flavor into the broth and becomes tender during long simmering.
Marrow bone
Adds richness and body to the broth through its fat and gelatin.
Potatoes
Soak up broth and become soft, adding starch and substance to the meal.
Cabbage
Turns sweet and tender as it cooks in the seasoned broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the broth before serving. Fat rises and collects on the surface of a simmered broth. Skimming it off keeps the soup clear and less greasy.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, onion, leek, celery, parsley, potato. 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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