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Pot-au-feu

A French boiled beef and mutton stew with vegetables, herbs, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 148 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pot-au-feu

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Roll the meat and tie it with string.

  2. Place the meat in a large saucepan and pour water over it.

  3. Add salt, onion, mace, leek, celery, chervil, herbs, and pepper.

  4. Put the saucepan on a slow fire and skim off any scum that rises.

Cook and simmer

  1. Boil gently for 4 to 5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and the bunch of herbs, then take off the string from the meat.

  2. Skim the broth and slice the meat thinly into a tureen.

  3. Pour a portion of the broth gently through a sieve over the bread until it swells, then add the remaining broth.

  4. Chop the vegetables finely and add them if desired.

  5. Serve the vegetables and meat 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. Leek + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Celery + cherviltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together278 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
Long gentle simmering turns the tough cuts tender and flavours the broth.
Mutton
Slow cooking softens the meat and adds rich, savoury depth to the broth.
Bread
Soaking in hot broth lets it swell and soften, absorbing liquid for a tender texture.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 4 to 5 hours. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and clouds the broth. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer lets collagen break down slowly and keeps the broth clear.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mutton, onion, leek, celery, chervil, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mutton, onion, leek, celery, chervil, pepper. 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

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