Skip to main content
Sauce

Bearnaise Sauce

A sauce made from shallots, tarragon vinegar, white sauce, egg yolks, and butter, strained and served.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Bearnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the reduction

  1. Chop the shallots.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with the vinegars and boil until reduced to 1 tablespoon.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the white sauce and mix well.

  2. Whisk in the egg yolks one at a time, ensuring each is fully incorporated before adding the next.

  3. Do not let it boil.

  4. Remove the saucepan from the heat.

  5. Whisk in the butter in small pieces, ensuring each piece is melted before adding the next.

  6. Strain through muslin.

  7. Serve.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with butter and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that stabilises the emulsion, giving a smooth texture.
Shallots
Provide a mild aromatic base that is reduced with the vinegar for flavour.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and the characteristic tarragon aroma once reduced.
White sauce
Forms the body of the sauce, adding thickness and stability.

The step that matters

Whisk in the egg yolks and butter off the heat. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot, and the butter can split out of the emulsion. Adding one at a time, keeping the sauce from boiling, and melting each butter piece before the next lets the yolks thicken smoothly into a stable emulsion.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

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

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes