Skip to main content
Main

Pot Au Feu

A French stew of beef, mutton, veal, salt pork, and fowl simmered with carrots, leeks, turnips, celery, and cabbage hearts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. In a large pot, combine the beef, mutton, veal, salt pork, and fowl.

  2. Add the chopped vegetables: carrots, leeks, turnips, celery, and cabbage hearts.

  3. Cover with water and bring to a boil, then simmer until the meats are tender but not falling apart.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef with the vegetables and pickled gherkins.

  2. Serve the mutton with caper sauce, the veal with brown gravy, and reserve the pork to eat cold.

  3. After boiling, transfer the fowl to the oven to brown, or serve it garnished with buttered rice.

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. 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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  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

Beef
Lean thigh beef becomes tender and flavourful as it simmers slowly in the broth.
Mutton
Its connective tissue softens during long simmering, giving rich meaty flavour to the pot.
Veal
Gelatin from its bones and connective tissue enriches the broth and gives a silky body.
Fowl
Its flesh and skin add savoury depth to the broth and can be browned after boiling.
Salt pork
Renders fat and salt into the broth, seasoning the pot and adding richness.
Cabbage
Absorbs savoury broth flavours while adding a mild sweetness and soft texture.

The step that matters

Simmering the meats gently. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and breaks the meats apart, while a gentle simmer slowly converts connective tissue to gelatin, keeping the meats tender and the broth clear.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mutton, veal, pork, carrot, leek, turnip. 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 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes