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Pot Au Feu De Maison

A hearty French stew of beef, veal, fowl, and root vegetables simmered for five hours.

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 De Maison

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. In a large earthen pot, combine the beef, veal, fowl, and cold water.

  2. Set the pot by the fire to skim gently.

Simmer

  1. Add salt, carrots, turnip, leeks, celery, and the onion with clove.

  2. Boil slowly for 5 hours without ceasing.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the roots, trim them neatly, and taste the broth, adding a little salt if needed.

  2. Skim the broth and add the roots back in 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.

  1. Turnip + leektop 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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. 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
Gives the broth its rich, savory flavor as it simmers slowly over hours.
Veal knuckle
Adds gelatin and body, so the broth feels fuller and silkier.
Fowl
Contributes savory poultry flavor to the broth during the long simmer.
Leeks
Add mild, sweet onion-like aroma that rounds out the broth.
Carrots
Release natural sweetness into the broth and remain as a vegetable to serve.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 5 hours without ceasing. A gentle, steady simmer keeps the broth clear and the meat tender. A hard rolling boil emulsifies fat and clouds the liquid, and letting it stop or reach a rolling boil early disrupts the slow extraction of flavor and gelatin.

Swap the clove

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

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

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