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Geneveve Sauce, or Sauce Genevoise

A savory sauce made with ham, carrot, spices, veal gravy, sherry, lemon, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Geneveve Sauce, or Sauce Genevoise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine diced ham, chopped carrot, cloves, mace, lemon-thyme, parsley, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  3. Stir in 1 teaspoon of flour.

  4. Continue simmering for 5 minutes.

  5. Gradually pour in 1 pint of boiling veal gravy.

  6. Let it simmer for nearly 1 hour.

  7. Strain the sauce.

Finish the sauce

  1. Heat it in a clean saucepan until boiling.

  2. Stir in 1½ cups of sherry or Madeira, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, cayenne, and salt if needed.

  3. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with 2 ounces of butter until smooth and add the mixture to the sauce.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil after adding the thickening.

Serve

  1. Serve over fish, particularly salmon or trout.

  2. Keep the remainder hot in a tureen.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and helps give it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the fish rather than running off.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and depth of flavour that balances the rich gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts its richness.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil after adding the thickening. Flour only thickens fully once heated to a boil, because its starch granules must swell and gelatinise. Boiling too little leaves the sauce thin, while the flour and butter must be blended smooth first to avoid lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, carrot, clove, lemon, thyme, parsley, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, clove, lemon, thyme, parsley, butter. 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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