Name: Sauce Bearnaise
Ingredients: Hollandaise Sauce; 1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon finely chopped capers; 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh tarragon; Tarragon vinegar

Why it works: Capers and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 379 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sauce Bearnaise

Ingredients

Hollandaise Sauce
1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley
1 teaspoon finely chopped capers
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh tarragon
Tarragon vinegar

Directions

Make the sauce

Prepare Hollandaise Sauce using tarragon vinegar instead of lemon juice.
Stir in the chopped parsley, capers, and fresh tarragon.

Serve

Serve with lamb croquettes, chops, steaks, broiled birds, smelt, boiled salmon, cod, or haddock.

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.

Capers + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together379 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,547 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Tarragon vinegar: Adds a sharp, acidic note in place of lemon juice, balancing the richness of the egg and butter.
Fresh tarragon: Contributes the sauce's characteristic aromatic, slightly anise-like flavour.
Capers: Add a salty, tangy bite that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, capers, tarragon, vinegar):

Parsleythe original
Fennelabout as good a flavor fit
Dillabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, capers, tarragon, vinegar. 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.