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Pot Au Feu

A hearty French soup of beef, mutton, veal, salt pork, fowl, and vegetables simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pot

  1. Combine the beef, mutton, veal, salt pork, and fowl in a large pot.

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

  3. Cover with water and bring to a boil.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer until the meats are tender but not falling apart.

  2. Serve the soup hot.

  3. Serve the beef with vegetables and pickled gherkins.

  4. Serve the mutton with caper sauce.

  5. Serve the veal with brown gravy.

  6. Serve the fowl with boiled rice, buttered and seasoned.

  7. Add slices of ham.

  8. Add a dessert of cheese, cakes, and fruit.

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
Slow simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and flavorful.
Mutton
Long gentle cooking tenderises the joint and enriches the broth with its fat and flavor.
Fowl
Simmering gives up gelatin and savory flavor to the broth while the bird cooks through.
Leeks
Mild onion flavor that sweetens and perfumes the broth as it cooks.
Carrots
Release natural sweetness into the broth, balancing the rich meats.

The step that matters

Simmer until the meats are tender but not falling apart. A rolling boil toughens meat and makes it break apart and cloud the broth. A gentle simmer lets collagen convert to gelatin slowly, giving tender meat and a clear, savory broth.

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.

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