Skip to main content
Main

French Pot-au-Feu

A traditional French stew of meat, vegetables, and herbs simmered slowly in a stock pot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pot-au-Feu

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Tie the meat tightly with string and place it in a stock pot.

  2. Add salt and cover the meat with cold water.

  3. Heat the pot gradually by the fire, skimming off any scum that forms.

  4. When nearly boiling, add 1 cup of cold water to help remove scum.

  5. Continue skimming until the surface is clean and clear.

Simmer

  1. Add cleaned and chopped vegetables to the pot.

  2. Tie thyme, marjoram, and whole pepper in muslin and add to the pot.

  3. Simmer gently until the meat and vegetables are tender.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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

Soup meat
Provides the flesh and bone that flavour the broth as they simmer.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the broth and helps draw flavour from the meat into the liquid.
Leeks
Add a mild, sweet onion-like flavour to the broth and vegetables.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth while becoming tender.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the liquid heats. Removing it while heating gradually keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting. Letting it boil hard would emulsify the scum back into the liquid.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, garlic, carrot, turnip, leek, celery. 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

Russian 5French 4 See all 133 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipes