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Sauce

Bearnaise Sauce

A sauce made with onion, tarragon vinegar, white sauce, egg yolks, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,399 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bearnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped onion and tarragon vinegar.

  2. Boil quickly until the vinegar reduces to about 2 teaspoons.

  3. Add the white sauce and boil for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Stir in the egg yolks one at a time, cooking until thick but do not let it boil.

  5. Stir continuously and whisk in the butter pieces until melted.

  6. Season with pepper and salt to taste.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Tarragon vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity and tarragon aroma that define the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they cook and give it a rich, creamy structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and smooth, glossy texture as it melts in.
White sauce
Forms the thickened base that the egg yolks and butter enrich.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the mixture boils, the proteins scramble and the sauce turns grainy and curdled. Stir constantly and keep the heat low once the yolks go in.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, sauce, egg, butter, pepper. 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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