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Sauce

Sauce Bearnaise

A French sauce made from shallots, wine, vinegar, pepper, egg yolks, butter, and meat extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sauce Bearnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the reduction

  1. Combine the wine, vinegar, shallots, and pepper in a saucepan and boil until reduced by half.

  2. Strain the mixture through a cloth and add the meat extract.

Finish the sauce

  1. Once cool, pour into an enamel saucepan, add the egg yolks, butter, and salt.

  2. Stir briskly until just before boiling.

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 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 with the butter and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that stabilises the emulsion with the yolks.
Shallots
Provide the aromatic base that flavours the reduced wine and vinegar.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and the characteristic tarragon flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir briskly until just before boiling. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the sauce smooth and thickened, so stop just short of boiling.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Dillfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, butter, meat, wine, egg, tarragon, vinegar. 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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