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Pot Au Feu and Bouilli

A slow‑cooked beef broth with vegetables, served with toasted bread and optional garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 and Bouilli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Place the beef and bones in a pot and cover with water over medium heat.

  2. Skim off any scum that rises as the water warms. Do not let the water boil. Add cold water in small amounts to help remove scum.

  3. Once the scum is removed, add salt, pepper, allspice, onion with cloves, leek, carrots, turnips, and bouquet garni gradually.

  4. Simmer gently for 3 to 4 hours. Skim occasionally. Optionally, add celery and parsnips during cooking.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the broth.

  2. Skim off the fat before serving. Add pounded sugar to the hot broth.

  3. Pour the mixture over toasted bread in a soup tureen.

  4. Serve with thinly sliced vegetables. Garnish with mashed potatoes or seasonal vegetables. Adjust seasoning with pepper and salt to taste.

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. Parsnip + turniptop 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. Parsnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 main meaty flavor as it simmers slowly.
Bones
Release gelatin and body into the broth, giving it a richer mouthfeel.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Carrots
Contribute gentle sweetness and color to the broth and vegetables.
Leek
Adds mild onion-like aroma and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the water from boiling while skimming scum. A gentle simmer lets scum rise and be skimmed off cleanly. Boiling churns the scum into the liquid, making the broth cloudy and greasy.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, leek, parsnip, carrot, turnip, pepper):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

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

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