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Sauce

Bernaise Sauce for Steak

A sauce made from shallot, vinegar, egg yolks, butter, tarragon, and chervil, used on steak.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bernaise Sauce for Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Reduce the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine minced shallot, coarse sea salt, black pepper, bruised pepper, tarragon, and chervil.

  2. Add vinegar and reduce until dry.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in egg yolks and gradually add fine butter while stirring.

  2. Pass the sauce through a sieve.

  3. Add finely chopped tarragon and chervil.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the emulsified sauce.
Vinegar
Provides acidity, and reducing it concentrates its sharp flavor for the base.
Shallot
Supplies a mild aromatic onion flavor to the reduced base.
Tarragon
Adds the characteristic aniseed aroma that defines the sauce.
Chervil
Contributes a delicate, fresh herbal aroma.

The step that matters

Adding the butter while stirring. Butter must be added gradually to the egg yolks so they emulsify into a stable sauce. If the mixture gets too hot or the butter goes in too fast, the yolks scramble and the sauce breaks into a greasy, separated texture.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, tarragon, chervil, vinegar, egg, butter):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Lettucefits less well
  4. Mustardfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, tarragon, chervil, vinegar, egg, 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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