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Sauce

Geneveve Sauce, or Sauce Genevoise

A savory sauce made with ham, carrot, spices, veal gravy, sherry, and butter, finished with a beurre manié.

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

Make the base

  1. In a stewpan, combine diced ham, carrot, 4 to 6 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.

Make the sauce

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

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

  3. Stir in 1½ cups of sherry or Madeira, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with 2 ounces of butter, and bring to a boil.

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

Lean ham
Adds savory meaty flavor that gives the sauce its base character.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and, with flour, thickens the sauce into a smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Veal gravy
Supplies the main liquid and rich savory body of the sauce.
Sherry or madeira
Adds sweetness and depth of aroma to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter paste at the end. Flour thickens only when heated to a boil and whisked in smoothly; adding it in lumps or without boiling leaves the sauce thin or grainy.

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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