Skip to main content
Main

Pot-au-Feu

A French boiled beef or mutton stew with carrots, leeks, turnips, celery, cabbage hearts, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pot-au-Feu

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Place the meat in an earthen or copper stock-pot.

  2. Pour in 2 quarts of cold water.

  3. Set the pot by the fire to heat slowly.

  4. Simmer for 3 to 5 hours.

  5. Add vegetables such as carrots, leeks, turnips, celery, and cabbage hearts.

Serve

  1. When ready, remove the meat.

  2. Garnish with vegetables, gherkins, or sauce.

  3. Place slices of bread in a soup tureen.

  4. Pour broth over the bread.

  5. Let the bread soak.

  6. Fill the tureen with the remaining broth.

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 + 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 + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Beef or mutton
Gives the broth its rich meaty flavour as it simmers slowly in water.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion-like aroma and sweetness to the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic savoury note to the broth.
Hearts of cabbage
Add mild sweetness and a tender texture to the finished pot.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat. Heating the pot slowly and simmering gently, rather than boiling hard, keeps the meat tender and the broth clear. Vigorous boiling toughens meat proteins and makes the broth cloudy.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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

More pot-au-feu recipes

Russian 5French 4 See all 133 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes