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Pot-au-Feu

A French beef stew made with shin or ox‑cheek, carrots, celery, onions, turnips, parsley, thyme, marjoram, cloves, and tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Pot-au-Feu

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the meat

  1. Tie the meat firmly into shape with string and place it in a large saucepan with the water.

  2. When it boils, add 1 teaspoon of salt and simmer gently for nearly 2 hours.

Add the vegetables

  1. Thoroughly clean the vegetables and tie the celery, parsnips, and carrots together.

  2. Add the vegetables (except the cabbage) to the meat and simmer gently for 2 more hours.

  3. Clean and trim the cabbage, cut it in half, and tie it together with string.

  4. Add the cabbage and simmer until tender, seasoning with pepper and salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat with the carrots, turnips, and parsnips as garnish, and pour some of the broth around for gravy.

  2. For the soup, put 2 quarts of the broth into a saucepan, bring to a boil, sprinkle in the sago or tapioca, and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef shin
Becomes tender and flavourful as its connective tissue breaks down during long, gentle simmering.
Tapioca or sago
Thickens the broth into a soup as its starch swells when heated.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the broth as they cook slowly.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boiling. A rolling boil toughens meat and makes the broth cloudy. Gentle simmering lets collagen convert slowly to gelatin, giving tender meat and a clear, rich broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, celery, turnip, parsley, thyme, marjoram):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, celery, turnip, parsley, thyme, marjoram. 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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