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Pot-au-Feu

A slow-cooked beef and bone broth with vegetables, served with toasted bread and optional garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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. Tie the beef neatly with string.

  2. Place the beef and bones in a 2-quart saucepan.

  3. Cover with soft water.

  4. Set on the fire.

Simmer the broth

  1. Remove scum as it rises.

  2. Do not let it boil.

  3. Add small quantities of cold water at intervals.

  4. Add salt, pepper, allspice, onion, leek, carrots, turnip, and herbs.

  5. Skim.

  6. Simmer gently for 3 to 4 hours.

  7. If in season, add celery and parsnip before serving.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the broth.

  2. Add sugar.

  3. Boil.

  4. Pour the broth into a soup tureen over small slices of toasted bread.

  5. Add some vegetables cut into thin slices.

  6. Remove the string.

  7. Serve the meat, garnishing with mashed potatoes, spinach, or other 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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  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

Beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender and flavours the broth as it simmers slowly.
Bones
Release gelatin and savoury flavour into the broth during long, gentle simmering.
Carrots
Contribute sweetness and aroma to the broth and remain as a vegetable garnish.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the broth as it simmers.
Leek
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Keep the broth just below a boil. Gentle simmering lets the meat become tender and the broth stay clear. A rolling boil toughens the meat and emulsifies fat and impurities into the liquid, making it cloudy.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, allspice, onion, clove, leek, carrot, turnip):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, allspice, onion, clove, leek, carrot, 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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