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Béarnaise sauce

Béarnaise sauce is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Béarnaise sauce rather than just read about it. In short: Béarnaise sauce (; French: [be.aʁ.nɛz] ; Occitan: Bearnesa) is a sauce made of clarified butter, egg yolk, white wine vinegar, and herbs. It is regarded as a "child" of hollandaise sauce.

Béarnaise sauce — main illustration
Béarnaise sauce — illustration

Key takeaways

  • Béarnaise sauce belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
  • Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
  • Connect Béarnaise sauce to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
  • Reproduce the core statement of Béarnaise sauce from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Béarnaise sauce (; French: [be.aʁ.nɛz] ; Occitan: Bearnesa) is a sauce made of clarified butter, egg yolk, white wine vinegar, and herbs. It is regarded as a "child" of hollandaise sauce. The difference is in the flavoring: béarnaise uses shallot, black pepper, and tarragon, while hollandaise uses white pepper or a pinch of cayenne. The sauce's name derives from the province of Béarn, France. It is a traditional sauce for steak.

History According to a common explanation, the sauce was accidentally invented by the chef Jean-Louis-François Collinet, the accidental 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. The restaurant was in the former residence of Henry IV of France, a gourmet himself, who was from Béarn. Although the sauce is a French invention, it became popular in the Nordic countries in the late 20th century, where it forms a major part of local steak cuisine with steaks and fries, and is occasionally used there as topping on pizza, whether as part of the pizza or as a cold dressing put on afterwards.

Preparation

As with hollandaise, there are several methods for preparing béarnaise. The most common method of preparation uses a bain-marie, whisking to a temperature of 66 °C (150 °F), where a reduction of vinegar is used to acidify the yolks. Auguste Escoffier and other sources call for a reduction of wine, vinegar, shallots, fresh chervil, fresh tarragon, and crushed peppercorns (later strained out). Alternatively, the flavorings may be added to a finished hollandaise (without lemon juice). Joy of Cooking describes a blender preparation with the same ingredients.

Derivatives Sauce Choron (also called béarnaise tomatée) uses tomato purée instead of herbs. It is named after Alexandre Étienne Choron. Sauce Foyot (also called Valois) is béarnaise with meat glaze (glace de viande) added. Sauce Colbert is Sauce Foyot with the addition of reduced white wine. Sauce Paloise uses mint instead of tarragon.

See also

List of sauces Steak sauce

References

Sources Child, Julia; Louisette Bertholle; Simone Beck (1961). Mastering the Art of French Cooking. New York: Knopf. Corriher, Shirley (1997). "Ch. 4: sauce sense". Cookwise, the Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking (1st ed.). New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc. ISBN 0688102298. David, Elizabeth (1960). French Provincial Cooking. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-118153-0. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) Escoffier, Auguste (1982) [Trans. fm 4th French (Flammarion) ed. 1921]. "Ch. 1: Sauces". La Guide Culinaire [The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery] (in French). English translation by H.L. Cracknell and R.J. Kaufmann (First American ed.). New York: Mayflower Books. ISBN 0-8317-5478-8. Rombauer, Irma S.; Rombauer Becker, Marion (1975). Joy of Cooking. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. (MacMillan). ISBN 0-02-604570-2.

External links

Béarnaise sauce from the British Good Food TV channel

Illustrations

Béarnaise sauce illustration

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Béarnaise sauce

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Béarnaise sauce claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Béarnaise sauce before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Béarnaise sauce ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Béarnaise sauce

In research
Béarnaise sauce appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry
Engineering practice reuses Béarnaise sauce in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom
Béarnaise sauce is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Creamy sauces, Egg-based sauces, Foods featuring butter, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life
Look for Béarnaise sauce outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.
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How to study Béarnaise sauce in 20 minutes

  1. Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
  2. Close the page and write down what Béarnaise sauce means in your own words.
  3. Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
  4. Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
  5. Explain Béarnaise sauce out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Béarnaise sauce in simple terms?

Béarnaise sauce (; French: [be.aʁ.nɛz] ; Occitan: Bearnesa) is a sauce made of clarified butter, egg yolk, white wine vinegar, and herbs. It is regarded as a "child" of hollandaise sauce.

Why does Béarnaise sauce matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Béarnaise sauce?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Béarnaise sauce.

Tags

  • Creamy sauces
  • Egg-based sauces
  • Foods featuring butter
  • French sauces
  • Occitan cuisine
  • Steak sauces

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