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Pot Au Feu

A French beef bone broth with roasted onion, tomatoes, optional vegetables, and optional rice or vermicelli, finished with browned sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the broth

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

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

  3. Simmer slowly all day long.

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

Finish the soup

  1. Add the roasted onion, tomatoes, and any other vegetables you prefer.

  2. Optionally, add a leek or garlic for extra flavor.

  3. You may also add rice or vermicelli for a change.

  4. Just before serving, burn 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 rich flavor during long simmering.
Onion
Roasted onion adds sweetness and deep, caramelized aroma to the broth.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh, bright note that balances the rich beef.
Brown sugar
Burned sugar adds caramel-like sweetness and color to the soup.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat after chilling. Fat that is not removed after the broth cools would stay on top and make the soup greasy. Lifting the solidified layer 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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