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Pot Au Feu

A French stew of beef, mutton, veal, salt pork, and fowl simmered with carrots, leeks, turnips, celery, and cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

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

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

  3. Cover with water, bring to a boil, then simmer until the meats are tender but not falling apart.

Serve

  1. Serve the beef with vegetables and pickled gherkins.

  2. Serve the mutton with caper sauce, veal with brown gravy, and the fowl either roasted or garnished with buttered rice.

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

Lean beef
Provides the main savory flavor and firm, sliceable meat after long simmering.
Mutton
Adds rich, savory flavor and tender meat to the broth.
Veal
Contributes mild flavor and gelatin that gives the broth body.
Salt pork
Adds fat and salty, savory depth to the broth.
Fowl
Enriches the broth with flavor and gelatin from the bones and skin.
Leeks
Add mild, sweet onion flavor that perfumes the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender but not falling apart. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil lets the meats become tender and keeps the broth clear. A rolling boil toughens proteins, breaks the meat apart, and makes the broth cloudy and greasy.

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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