Name: French Beef Soup, or Pot-au-feu, Camp Fashion
Ingredients: 6 lbs beef, cut into 2 or 3 pieces, bones included; ½ lb mixed vegetables (onions, carrots, turnips, celery, leeks); 3 teaspoons salt; 1 teaspoon pepper; 1 teaspoon sugar (optional); 8 pints water; 1½ lb bread, sliced or 1 lb broken biscuits (optional)

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 ↓

French Beef Soup, or Pot-au-feu, Camp Fashion

Ingredients

6 lbs beef, cut into 2 or 3 pieces, bones included
½ lb mixed vegetables (onions, carrots, turnips, celery, leeks)
3 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
8 pints water
1½ lb bread, sliced or 1 lb broken biscuits (optional)

Directions

In a canteen saucepan, combine beef, mixed vegetables, salt, pepper, sugar, and water.
Bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 3 hours.
Remove some fat from the surface and serve.
For a nutritious soup, add bread or biscuits soaked in the broth before serving.

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.

Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,046 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,310 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: Bones and meat cook slowly, releasing flavor and gelatin into the broth.
Mixed vegetables: Onions, carrots, turnips, celery and leeks sweeten and flavor the broth as they simmer.
Bread or biscuits: Soaked in the broth, they absorb liquid and add body to the soup.

The step that matters

Bring to a gentle boil and simmer. A rolling boil makes the broth cloudy and can toughen the meat. Keeping it at a gentle simmer lets the meat become tender while the broth stays clear.

Swap the onion

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

Parsnipfits better
Beetrootfits better
Lettucefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, celery, leek, pepper, 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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French Beef Soup, or Pot-au-feu, Camp Fashion