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French Pot-au-Feu

A hearty French beef stew with vegetables and spices simmered slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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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 pot

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

  2. Add the coarse sea salt and enough water to cover the meat.

  3. Heat the pot gradually by the fire.

  4. Remove any scum that forms on the surface.

Add the vegetables and spices

  1. Add the chopped onions, garlic, carrots, turnips, leek, celery, parsley, and tomatoes.

  2. Tie the thyme, marjoram, peppercorns, allspice, cinnamon, mace, and cloves in a piece of muslin.

  3. Add the muslin bundle of spices to the pot.

  4. Stir in the sugar.

Simmer

  1. Let the mixture simmer until the meat is 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 main protein, which becomes tender and flavourful during long simmering.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury base flavour as they soften into the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Celery
Adds aromatic, savoury depth to the broth.
Tomatoes
Contribute acidity and savoury flavour to the broth.
Sugar
Balances the salt and acidity and rounds out the broth's flavour.

The step that matters

Remove the scum. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities released from the meat as it heats. Skimming it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or greasy.

“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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