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Geneveve Sauce, Oe Sauce Genevoise

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

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, Oe Sauce Genevoise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a stewpan, combine diced ham, carrot, cloves, mace, lemon-thyme, parsley, and butter.

  2. Simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

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

  4. Gradually pour in boiling veal gravy and let simmer for nearly 1 hour.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the sauce into a clean saucepan and heat until boiling.

  2. Stir in sherry or Madeira, lemon juice, cayenne, and salt if needed.

  3. Mix 1 tablespoon flour with 2 ounces butter until smooth, then add to the sauce.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil after thickening.

  5. Serve over fish, particularly salmon or trout, and 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 liquid base and gives the sauce its body and savory depth.
Butter
Adds richness and, kneaded with flour, thickens the sauce as a roux-like paste.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish instead of running off.
Sherry or madeira
Adds aromatic depth and a mild sweetness that rounds out the savory stock.
Lemon juice
Brightens the sauce with acidity that balances the richness of the butter and gravy.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky meaty flavor to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter paste. Flour must be fully smoothed into the butter and then boiled to cook out its raw starch taste and reach full thickening power. Adding it lumpy or without reheating leaves specks and a floury flavor.

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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