Skip to main content
Main

Genevese Sauce, or Sauce Gene Voise

A savory sauce made with diced 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
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Gene Voise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

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

  2. Simmer the mixture for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

  3. Stir in the flour and continue simmering for another 5 minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Gradually pour in the boiling veal gravy and let the sauce simmer softly for nearly 1 hour.

  2. Strain the sauce into a clean saucepan and heat it 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
Adds richness and carries the aromatic flavours from the herbs and spices.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquid.
Veal gravy
Forms the savoury body of the sauce and gives it its main flavour.
Lean ham
Contributes salty, savoury meat flavour to the stock.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and aromatic depth to the base.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour must cook in the hot butter for a few minutes to lose its raw taste and to thicken smoothly. Adding the boiling gravy afterward then helps prevent 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipes