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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

Make the sauce base

  1. Combine the chopped onion and tarragon vinegar in a saucepan.

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

  3. Add the white sauce.

  4. Boil for 2-3 minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in the egg yolks one at a time.

  2. Cook until thick but do not let it boil to avoid curdling.

  3. Stir quickly while whisking in the butter pieces until fully incorporated.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce as they cook, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps form a smooth, glossy emulsion with the yolks.
White sauce
Provides a stable base that adds body and helps the sauce hold together.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and the characteristic tarragon aroma that defines a béarnaise.

The step that matters

Cook until thick without boiling. Egg yolks begin to scramble and curdle when they get too hot. Gentle heat lets them thicken into a smooth emulsion instead of setting into lumps.

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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