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French Pot Au Feu

A French beef stew simmered with onions, leeks, carrots, turnips, and cloves, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

French Pot Au Feu

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, combine 1 gallon of water and 4 pounds of beef.

  2. Add 3 teaspoons of coarse sea salt, 1 teaspoon of black pepper, 4 chopped onions, 4 chopped leeks, 2 chopped carrots, 2 chopped turnips, and 3 cloves.

  3. If using, add 1 burnt onion or 3 tablespoons of coloring.

  4. Bring to a boil, skim off any scum, and reduce heat to simmer.

  5. Add a little cold water occasionally to keep the broth clear.

  6. Simmer for 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Place sliced bread in a tureen.

  2. Pour the broth and some vegetables over the bread.

  3. Serve the meat separately with remaining vegetables.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and flavouring the broth.
Onions
Release sweetness and savoury depth into the broth as they cook.
Leeks
Add a mild, sweet onion-like flavour to the broth.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Turnips
Add a mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the broth.
Bread
Soaks up the broth, becoming soft and flavourful when served in it.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle and skim the scum. A rolling boil makes the broth cloudy and can toughen the meat. Skimming removes impurities that would otherwise cloud and taint the broth, and occasional cold water helps proteins clump and settle.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

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