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Genevese Sauce, or Sauce Genevoise

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

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 sauce 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 flour and continue simmering for 5 minutes.

Finish the sauce

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

  2. Strain the sauce, heat it in a clean saucepan, and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in ½ cup of Mdigre.

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
Provides the main liquid and meaty body that the sauce is built on.
Flour
Thickens the butter and fat mixture so the sauce becomes smooth and lightly body-rich.
Butter
Carries the flavours of the ham and aromatics and adds richness to the sauce.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, salty depth that flavours the sauce as it simmers.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and keep it simmering. Flour must cook in the hot fat for a few minutes so its raw starch taste fades and it thickens evenly; adding it without cooking leaves a pasty flavour and 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.

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