Skip to main content
Main

Sob Sauce, Genevese Sauce, Genovese, for Salmon, Trout, &C.

A savory fish sauce made with onion, carrot, herbs, mushrooms, spices, butter, stock, sherry, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sob Sauce, Genevese Sauce, Genovese, for Salmon, Trout, &C.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavouring

  1. Cut the onion and carrot into small rings.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the onion, carrot, herbs, mushrooms, bay leaf, cloves, and mace.

  3. Add the butter and simmer gently over low heat until the onion is tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour in the stock and sherry, and stew slowly for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture into a clean saucepan.

  3. Make a thickening with butter and flour.

  4. Add the thickening to the sauce.

  5. Stir over heat until smooth.

  6. Add the lemon juice.

  7. Bring to a boil.

  8. Serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 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 and carries the flavours of the aromatics as they simmer.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter, giving it body and a smooth texture.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, providing most of its volume.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the stewed liquid.
Onion
Softens during simmering and contributes sweetness and savoury body to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Butter and flour must be cooked into a smooth paste before being stirred into the hot liquid, or lumps form. Stirring over heat until smooth lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, parsley, onion, mushroom, clove, butter, sherry):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, parsley, onion, mushroom, clove, butter, sherry. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes