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Pot-au-feu

A French boiled beef dish with carrots, turnips, onion, celery, parsley, leek, herbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Prepare the beef

  1. Choose a tender piece of round beef and bind it with tape or cloth to keep its shape.

  2. Heat the drippings in a saucepan, add the beef, and brown it evenly.

Simmer the broth

  1. Add 4 quarts of boiling water and 1 teaspoon of salt, then simmer gently.

  2. Remove the scum as it rises, adding ⅓ cup of cold water every 15 minutes until clear.

  3. Simmer for 3 hours.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Meanwhile, scrape and quarter the carrots, peel the onions and turnips, and stick 10 whole cloves in one onion.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rump beef
Long, gentle simmering breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and easy to slice.
Drippings
Browning the beef in fat builds roasted, savory flavor that carries into the broth.
Carrots
Release natural sugars as they cook, adding gentle sweetness and color to the broth.
Small white turnips
Soften during simmering and add mild sweetness to the broth.
Onion
Cooking releases savory aromatic compounds that deepen the flavor of the broth.

The step that matters

Removing the scum as it rises. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities. Skimming it as it forms, and adding cold water so it rises and sets, keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

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

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