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Sauce

Bearnaise Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, butter, herbs, and seasonings, served warm with meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,259 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bearnaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg yolks slightly.

  2. Add cold water and one tablespoon of butter.

  3. Cook in a double boiler for a moment.

  4. Add the remaining three tablespoons of butter, one at a time.

  5. Stir in salt, paprika, parsley, and horseradish if using.

  6. For a different flavor, substitute tarragon vinegar for horseradish.

  7. Serve warm after the meat is served.

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. Parsley + tarragontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + vinegartop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,299 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together2,588 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 the butter and thicken the sauce into a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and stabilises the emulsion as it is whisked in gradually.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler for a moment. Gentle heat lets the yolks thicken without scrambling. If the heat is too high, the eggs curdle and the emulsion breaks.

Flavor stand-ins for the horseradish

The recipe marks horseradish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, parsley, tarragon, vinegar):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, parsley, 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.

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