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Bearnaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, egg yolks, tarragon vinegar, stock, lemon juice, onion, parsley, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bearnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add salt, paprika, and egg yolks; stir until light.

  3. Place the mixture in a double boiler.

  4. Add tarragon vinegar, soup stock (or hot water), lemon juice, and onion; stir with a wire whisk until thick.

  5. Stir in the chopped parsley.

Serve

  1. Serve with steak, chops, squabs, or boiled 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and the characteristic tarragon aroma.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and yolk mixture.

The step that matters

Thickening the yolk mixture over the double boiler. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Gentle, indirect heat from the double boiler lets them thicken smoothly while the whisk keeps them moving and emulsified.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, tarragon, vinegar, lemon, parsley. 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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