Potée

potée nowadays a pot-au-feu using pork as the meat and including not only the usual root vegetables but also haricot beans and often potatoes; a dish emblematic of rural France, simple, rustic, familial, claimed by various regions of France as their own speciality.

The meaning was broader in the distant past. Antoine Furetière (1691) gave this quotation, by way of definition and illustration: ‘the contents of the marmite of an ordinary bourgeois. He arrived late to dine with me, he was content with my potée, we ate only the potée.’ The potée then was a sort of antique potage, of varying ingredients, belonging to the bourgeoisie rather than the peasants, and without any special regional connotation.