Béarnaise sauce

Béarnaise sauce

Béarnaise sauce, garnished with tarragon.
Type Sauce
Place of origin Paris, France
Main ingredients egg yolk, clarified butter, white wine vinegar
Cookbook: Béarnaise sauce  Media: Béarnaise sauce

Bearnaise or Béarnaise sauce (/bɚrˈneɪz/, French: [be.aʁ.nɛz]) is a sauce made of clarified butter emulsified in egg yolks and white wine vinegar and flavored with herbs. It is considered to be a "child" of the mother Hollandaise sauce, one of the five sauces in the French haute cuisine mother sauce repertoire.[1] The difference is only in the flavoring: Béarnaise uses shallot, chervil, peppercorn, and tarragon, while Hollandaise uses lemon juice or white wine. Its name is related to the province of Béarn, France.[2]

In appearance, it is light yellow and opaque, smooth and creamy.

Béarnaise is a traditional sauce for steak.[3][4]

History

The sauce was likely first created by the chef Collinet, the inventor of puffed potatoes (pommes de terre soufflées), and served at the 1836 opening of Le Pavillon Henri IV, a restaurant at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, not far from Paris. This assumption is supported by the fact that the restaurant was named for Henry IV of France, a gourmet himself, who was born in the Béarn region,[5] a former province now in the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, in southwestern France.

Preparation

A Béarnaise sauce is simply clarified butter, an egg yolk, a shallot, a little tarragon vinegar. It takes years of practice for the result to be perfect. – Fernand Point [6]

Like Hollandaise sauce, there are several methods for the preparation of Béarnaise sauce. The most common preparation is a bain-marie method where a reduction of vinegar is used to acidulate the yolks. Escoffier[3] calls for a reduction of wine, vinegar, shallots, fresh chervil, fresh tarragon and crushed peppercorns (later strained out), with fresh tarragon and chervil to finish instead of lemon juice. Others are similar.[7] Alternatively, the flavorings may be added to a finished Hollandaise (sans lemon juice). Joy of Cooking[8] describes a blender preparation with the same ingredients. A faux Béarnaise can be produced by adding capers and tarragon to a Hollandaise.[9]

Derivatives of Béarnaise sauce

See also

Notes

  1. The family is sometimes referred to as "mayonnaise sauces" as they are, like mayonnaise, based on the emulsion of an oil in egg yolk.
  2. "Bernaise" is a frequent misspelling based on the common English pronunciation [ber-neyz] of Béarnaise, not an attempt to associate the sauce with Bern, Switzerland, or any other location.
  3. 1 2 Escoffier: 89
  4. Julia Child
  5. What is Bearnaise sauce? | Cookthink
  6. Restaurateur Fernand Point (1897–1955) in Ma Gastronomie.
  7. Cookwise, pp.304-5
  8. 1 2 3 Joy of Cooking p.359
  9. Cookwise, pp.302-3.
  10. Escoffier: 90
  11. Escoffier: 91
  12. Escoffier: 41
  13. Escoffier: 141

References

External links

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Béarnaise sauce.
Look up béarnaise sauce in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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