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Geneve Ve Sauce, or Sauce Genevoise

A sauce made with ham, carrot, spices, veal gravy, sherry, and 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 ↓

Geneve Ve Sauce, or Sauce Genevoise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine diced ham, chopped carrot, cloves, mace, lemon thyme, parsley, and butter in a stewpan.

  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.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain the sauce into a clean saucepan and bring to a boil.

  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. Boil the sauce after thickening, then pour over fish, primarily salmon or trout.

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 savoury body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and, kneaded with flour, thickens the sauce smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in the hot liquid to give body.
Sherry or madeira
Adds depth and a fortified wine sweetness and acidity to the sauce.
Lean ham
Releases savoury flavour into the stock during the long simmer.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour paste. Flour added raw to hot liquid clumps unless it is first blended with butter and whisked in smoothly. Boiling after thickening then cooks out the raw starch taste and sets the sauce's body.

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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