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French Pot Au Feu

A French beef stew with vegetables and 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 salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, 4 onions, 4 leeks, 2 carrots, 2 turnips, 3 cloves, and 1 burnt onion or 3 tablespoons of coloring.

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

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

  5. Simmer for 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Slice bread and place it in a tureen, then pour the broth and some vegetables over it.

  2. Serve the meat separately with the 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
Breaks down during long simmering, releasing flavour and gelatin into the broth while the meat becomes tender.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook down.
Leeks
Contribute mild onion-like aroma and sweetness to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after the boil. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities that rise when the broth first boils. Skimming it keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer, not a rolling boil, prevents fat and particles from being emulsified back into the broth.

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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