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Pot-au-feu

A French boiled beef stew with vegetables and bone stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the broth

  1. In a large stock pot, combine the beef and bone.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables: carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, celery, and parsnips.

  3. Stick the clove into the onion and add it to the pot.

  4. Cover with water and bring to a boil.

  5. Reduce heat and simmer for several hours until the meat is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the broth and serve the meat and vegetables separately.

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. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh lean beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Beef bone
Adds gelatin and body to the broth as it simmers.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook down.
Leeks
Contribute a mild onion-like flavor to the broth.
Parsnips
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth and vegetables.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat gently. Keeping the liquid at a low simmer rather than a hard boil lets collagen in the lean beef break down slowly, so the meat turns tender without tightening and drying out. A rolling boil toughens the proteins and makes the broth cloudy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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