Beef Bourguignon Vs Daube Provencal

The main differences:

• Bourguignon is made with a red wine from the Burgundy (Bourgogne) region. Daube is a southern dish, from provence/languedoc, and would typically be made with a richer red (occasionally, and originally, white) wine from that region
• Bourguignon is almost always garnished with small onions, carrots, mushroom and bacon, nothing else. Daube, being from the south, often has more mediterranean ingredients, such as garlic, tomatoes, larger onions, olives etc. and herbes de provence (vs a standard bouquet garni in a bourguignon)
• Though bourguignon will use braising cuts of meat, it will typically just be cooked until the meat is tender, then served. Vegetables are often added at the end to keep their appearance and texture. Daube will typically user even cheaper cuts of meat with more sinew and collagen to break down e.g. shin, cheek, blade. It will be cooked for a long time, often with all the vegetables added from the start or half way through, allowing the meat to become very soft and break apart and thicken the braising liquid
• Daube is traditionally cooked in a Daubiere, though what difference this makes to the end result is minimal

Effectively, bourguignon is perfectly braised meat in a rich onion-bacon-burgundy sauce, with some perfectly cooked mushrooms, carrots and baby onions as garnish.

Daube is a thick and hearty red wine and beef stew with meltingly soft meat and well cooked vegetables with mediterranean influenced flavours.

On a quick glance, one might easily confuse one with the other, but if you take a closer look, there are some subtle and not-so-subtle differences. You may want to consider that the method of “sear meat pieces in pot, cover with liquid (wine, in this case), let simmer until meat is tender” is a quite generic method of cooking certain pieces of meat.

But what about the differences?

• Both dishes are today often made with beef, but unlike the bœf (=beef) bourguignon, a daube (=traditional cooking/braising pot) would often be made with wild boar, venison, mutton, whatever was available.

• Both use the local wine, which would obviously give a slightly different flavor.

• In a bœf bourguignon, the meat is often taken out once it’s done and the sauce reduced or thickened with a beurre manie, then served as cubes of meat in a sauce. The daube remains more liquid, more like a thick a soup. The very long cooking time (started in the morning, then left to simmer until dinner time) makes the meat very tender and ready to fall apart. It is traditionally eaten with a spoon and a slice of bread.
  (Looking at your tags, the tag “soup” is only justified for the daube, not the bœf bourguignon.)

• The added vegetables differ, a bœf bourguignon often has mushrooms and bacon in addition to the carrot and onion, a daube shows a more Mediterranean flavor, with olives, tomatoes, garlic, other herbs.