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Pot-au-feu

A hearty beef soup with cabbage, leeks, carrots, onions, and French bread, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pot-au-feu

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put the meat and cold water into a large pot and bring to a gentle boil, skimming off any foam.

  2. Wash and clean the vegetables.

  3. Stick the cloves into the onion.

  4. Tie the cabbage and leeks together.

  5. Add them to the pot.

  6. Add the carrots cut into large pieces, bouquet garni, peppercorns, and salt.

Simmer

  1. Let it simmer gently for 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, cut the bread into thin slices.

  2. Place the sliced bread in a soup tureen.

  3. Add some of the carrot, leeks, and onions cut into small pieces.

  4. Remove the meat from the pot.

  5. Season the broth to taste.

  6. Strain it into the soup tureen.

  7. Sprinkle the chopped parsley on top.

  8. Serve.

  9. The meat and remaining vegetables can be served as a separate course.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

Brisket of beef
Slow simmering turns the tough cut tender and releases flavour into the broth.
French bread
Soaks up the hot broth, becoming soft and giving the soup body.
Cabbage
Adds sweetness and body to the broth as it cooks slowly.
Leeks
Contribute mild onion sweetness and aroma to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth.

The step that matters

Gentle simmer after the boil. Keeping the pot at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil keeps the broth clear and the meat tender. Skimming foam early removes impurities that would otherwise cloud the broth.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, leek, onion, carrot, parsley, thyme, clove):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, leek, onion, carrot, parsley, thyme, clove. 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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