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Sauce

Genevese Sauce, or Sauce Genevoise

A savory sauce made with ham, carrot, cloves, mace, thyme, parsley, butter, flour, veal gravy, and maigre.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Genevese Sauce, or Sauce Genevoise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

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

  2. Simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Thicken and simmer

  1. Stir in flour and continue simmering for 5 minutes.

  2. Gradually pour in boiling veal gravy.

  3. Let the sauce simmer for nearly 1 hour.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the sauce into a clean saucepan.

  2. Heat until boiling.

  3. Stir in 1½ cups of Maigre.

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Veal gravy
Provides the main savoury, meaty liquid that forms the base of the sauce.
Lean ham
Releases savoury flavour into the butter and stock during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour must be stirred in and cooked briefly before the liquid is added so it thickens smoothly; if it is not well mixed, it can form lumps and the sauce will be uneven in texture.

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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