Skip to main content
Main

Pot-au-feu

A traditional French stew of beef and mutton simmered with vegetables and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 and tie the meat with string.

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

  3. Put the saucepan on a slow fire and remove any scum that rises.

  4. Stick the cloves into the onion and tie it with the herbs; add to the saucepan.

Simmer

  1. Boil gently for 4 to 5 hours.

  2. Remove the meat and the bunch of herbs; take off the string from the meat.

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

Serve

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

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

  3. 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
Gives the broth its rich meaty flavour and the tender meat served in the dish.
Mutton
Adds further meaty flavour and body to the broth during the long gentle simmer.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the broth and the vegetables served alongside.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and a tender texture to the vegetables served with the meat.
Bread
Soaks up part of the broth as it swells, giving a softer, moister base for the soup.

The step that matters

Remove the scum as it rises. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise as the water heats. Skimming it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting instead of cloudy and greasy.

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

Russian 5French 4 See all 133 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipes