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Genevese Sauce, or Sauce Genevoise

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

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 ↓

Genevese Sauce, or Sauce Genevoise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

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

  2. Simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

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

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

  5. Strain the sauce and heat it in a clean saucepan until boiling.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in ⅓ cup sherry or Madeira, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and salt to taste.

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

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

  4. Serve over fish, primarily 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce, giving it body as it cooks with the butter.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the ham and vegetables and adds richness to the sauce.
Veal gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the stock as it simmers.
Sherry or madeira
Adds wine acidity and aroma that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil after adding the thickening. Flour must reach a boil in the sauce to swell and fully cook; otherwise the sauce stays pasty and tastes of raw flour.

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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