Name: French Pot-au-feu
Ingredients: beef (for boiling); carrots; turnips; leeks; onions; celery; coarse sea salt; pepper; water

Why it works: Turnip and leek 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

Cut the beef into large pieces and place in a large pot.
Add chopped carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, and celery.
Season with coarse sea salt and pepper.
Cover with water and bring to a boil.
Reduce heat and simmer for several hours until the meat is tender.
Serve hot as a soup or with the meat as a main dish.

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.

Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,046 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + leektop 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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, pepper):

Parsnipfits better
Lettucefits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, leek, celery, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.