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Geneveve 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 ↓

Geneveve Sauce, or Sauce Genevoise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare 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 of flour and continue simmering for 5 minutes.

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

Finish and serve

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

  2. Stir in 1½ cups of sherry or Madeira, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, cayenne, and salt if needed.

  3. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with 2 ounces of butter until smooth, then add to the sauce. Boil the sauce after adding the thickening, then serve 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 savoury meaty body that forms the base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour forms a roux-style thickener.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Sherry or madeira
Adds wine acidity and aromatic depth that rounds out the savoury base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Lean ham
Lends a salty, smoky meat flavour to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour thickener. Whisking the flour and butter until smooth and then boiling the sauce lets the starch swell fully and thicken evenly. Adding it lumpy or skipping the boil leaves the sauce thin or floury-tasting.

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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