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Pot-au-Feu

A traditional French beef stew cooked with root vegetables and herbs, served with stale French roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip 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

Prepare

  1. Tie the beef into shape with a piece of string.

  2. Thoroughly clean the vegetables.

Make the broth

  1. Place the beef in a large stock pot with 3 quarts of water.

  2. Add the vegetables, herbs, peppercorns, cloves, and salt to the pot.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for several hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with pieces of stale French roll.

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 + turniptop 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. Parsnip + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long gentle simmering.
Stale french roll
Soaks up the broth, adding body and a soft texture to each serving.
Leeks
Release sweet, mild flavor into the broth during simmering.
Cabbage
Adds sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after the boil. Once the pot boils, reducing the heat to a gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and lets the beef become tender without toughening its proteins.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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