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Sauce

Bernaise Sauce for Steak

A sauce of shallot, pepper, tarragon, chervil, vinegar, egg yolks, and butter.

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

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

  2. Add the vinegar and reduce until dry.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks, gradually adding the butter while stirring.

  4. Pass the sauce through a sieve.

  5. Add a pinch of 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 gently cook.
Butter
Adds richness and body, forming a smooth emulsion with the yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the butter.
Shallot
Provides a mild aromatic base that flavours the reduction.
Tarragon
Contributes the characteristic aniseed aroma of béarnaise.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks and add the butter gradually. Egg yolks must be warmed gently while the butter is added slowly and stirred constantly. This lets the yolks emulsify the butter into a smooth sauce; adding butter too fast or heating too hard can split it or scramble the yolks.

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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