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Soup

Pot Au Feu

A beef bone broth simmered with onion, tomatoes, optional vegetables, and finished with brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,326 recipes. Both carry ethyl butyrate, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pot Au Feu

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Extract the marrow from the beef bone and place it in a pot.

  2. Cover the beef bone with 3 quarts of cold water and cover tightly.

  3. Simmer slowly on low heat all day long.

  4. The next day, remove the coat of grease from the top before heating.

Add the vegetables

  1. Stick whole cloves into the onion and roast it in the oven until rich brown.

  2. Add the roasted onion, tomatoes, and any other vegetables to the pot.

  3. Optionally, add a leek or section of garlic for extra flavor.

  4. For a change, add rice or vermicelli.

  5. Just before serving, brown a little brown sugar and stir it into the soup.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  2. Clove + leektop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Leek + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together161 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

Beef bone
Releases marrow and collagen that give the broth body and a rich, savory flavor.
Onion
Roasting until brown adds sweet, caramelized depth to the broth.
Brown sugar
Caramelized briefly before serving, it adds a deeper color and a hint of sweetness.

The step that matters

Removing the grease the next day. Fat that solidifies on top of a chilled broth can make the soup greasy and heavy if left in. Lifting it off before reheating gives a cleaner, lighter broth.

Swap the leek

The recipe marks leek as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, onion, clove, tomato, rice, sugar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Leekthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, onion, clove, tomato, rice, sugar. 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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