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Sauce Bearnaise

A sauce made from tarragon vinegar, shallots, peppercorns, thyme, egg yolks, white sauce, butter, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 602 recipes mention both. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sauce Bearnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the reduction

  1. Combine shallots, peppercorns, thyme, and tarragon vinegar in a stewpan.

  2. Cover and boil until reduced.

  3. Remove the thyme.

Make the sauce

  1. Add white sauce and a little dissolved meat glaze.

  2. Whisk in egg yolks, ensuring the sauce does not boil.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Gradually work in butter, adding a little at a time to prevent the sauce from becoming oily.

  5. Strain the sauce through a fine strainer.

  6. Add chopped tarragon, chervil, and a few drops of lemon juice if desired.

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.

  1. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Tarragon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together528 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + shallottop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,374 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 with butter and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Butter
Provides richness and body, emulsified into the yolks to form a smooth sauce.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and concentrated tarragon flavour when reduced with the shallots.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like aroma and flavour to the reduction.
White sauce
Adds body and stability to the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisk in egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce boils, the yolks scramble and the sauce curdles and cannot be recovered smoothly. Removing it from heat before adding butter helps keep it emulsified.

Flavor stand-ins for the thyme

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

  1. Capersbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleyabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Thymethe original

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

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