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Sauce Béarnaise

A rich, buttery sauce flavored with shallots, vinegar, pepper, and nutmeg, served with fish, lobster, or grilled meats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sauce Béarnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the reduction

  1. Chop the shallots or chives.

  2. Place them in a china-lined saucepan with the vinegar.

  3. Simmer until reduced by half.

  4. Strain and set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the egg yolks, butter, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (bain-marie).

  3. Stir constantly until the mixture begins to thicken, being careful not to let it boil.

  4. Gradually add the glaze while stirring constantly until the sauce is as thick as rich custard.

  5. Add the strained vinegar mixture.

  6. If the sauce is not acidic enough, add a squeeze of lemon juice and a pinch of salt carefully.

  7. If the sauce curdles or becomes too thick, add a few drops of cold water and stir.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with fish, lobster, or grilled meats.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and create its creamy, emulsified body as they cook gently.
Butter
Adds richness and silky texture, emulsifying with the yolks to give the sauce its body.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the rich butter and yolks, reduced with shallots for flavour.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like aroma and flavour to the reduction that infuses the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the heat gentle while thickening the yolks. Egg yolks scramble and curdle if they get too hot, and the sauce can break. Gentle bain-marie heat, with constant stirring, lets the yolks thicken smoothly into an emulsion.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, vinegar, egg, butter, pepper, lemon. 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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