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Pot-au-feu

A slow-cooked beef stew with liver, vegetables, and spices served with clear broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Pot-au-feu

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the broth

  1. Wipe the beef clean and place it in a soup kettle with 5 quarts of cold water.

  2. Bring the contents to a slow boil, skimming off any foam; once boiling, skim carefully.

  3. Add the salt and liver, then simmer for 2 hours, adding 1 cup of cold water every 30 minutes.

Add the vegetables

  1. After 2 hours, add the clove and vegetables, then simmer for an additional 2 hours.

  2. Skim off all the fat.

Serve

  1. Pour some clear soup into a tureen.

  2. Serve the meat and vegetables on a large platter, garnishing with sliced vegetables around the meat.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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 main meaty flavor, and its connective tissue softens into a richer broth.
Liver
Adds a deeper, savory richness to the broth.
Onions
Contribute aromatic sweetness and depth as they cook into the broth.
Carrot
Softens and releases natural sweetness into the broth and the served dish.
Turnip
Softens during long simmering and adds mild sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Bring the contents to a slow boil. Vigorous boiling churns fat and impurities into the liquid, making the broth cloudy. Keeping it at a gentle simmer lets fat and foam rise to the surface, where they can be skimmed off, leaving a clear soup.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, liver, carrot, turnip, onion, celery. 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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