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Bearnaise Sauce

A sauce made from white wine vinegar, shallots, beef extract, egg yolks, butter, herbs, and red pepper, served warm with meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 266 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Bearnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine white wine vinegar and chopped shallots in a saucepan.

  2. Stew until softened.

  3. Add beef extract and egg yolks, stirring over low heat until the mixture begins to thicken.

  4. Remove from heat and gradually whisk in butter, adding a few drops of water as needed.

  5. Strain the sauce.

  6. Mix in chopped parsley, chervil, tarragon, and red pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with fillet steaks, chops, or fish.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Shallot + cherviltop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,718 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. White wine + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Parsley + cherviltop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. White wine + vinegartop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 gently cook over low heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the sauce its smooth body.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the butter and yolks.
Shallots
Provide a mild aromatic onion flavour once softened in the vinegar.

The step that matters

Whisking in the butter. Egg yolks can scramble if the mixture gets too hot, and butter can separate if added too fast. Removing the pan from the heat and adding butter gradually lets the yolks emulsify it into a smooth sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the chervil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, vinegar, shallot, beef, egg, butter, parsley):

  1. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Dillbetter flavor fit
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, shallot, beef, egg, butter, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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