Good steak calls for a good sauce, and speaking of sauces, here’s one that cooks often refer to as a mother-sauce – Béarnaise. But before dwelling on Béarnaise sauce, let’s talk some more about mother sauces.
Mother sauces refer to the main sauces of the French cuisine. The term itself was coined by Marie-Antoine (Antonin) Carême who wrote the multi-volume work L’Art de la Cuisine Française in the nineteenth century.
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Antonin became one of the most influential chefs in the world, but before that, he worked as an apprentice to a pâtissier in Paris and was born a showman. He started working as a cook for leaders of the epoch and wrote books on pastry and French cuisine.
In his multi-volume work, he mentions among other foods, sauces – petites and grandes, naming allemande, béchamel, velouté and espagnole as the mother sauces of French cooking. These would be the grandes sauces, while a variety of other sauces make up the petites category.
Is Béarnaise truly a mother sauce?
Technically speaking, no, Béarnaise is not a mother sauce, but a secondary sauce of hollandaise, which was added to the list of mother sauces in the 20th century.
Chef Auguste Escoffier who followed chef Antonin and based a lot of his work on that of his predecessor updated the list by adding the hollandaise sauce and sauce tomat to the list while demoting allemande as a child-sauce of velouté.
Mother sauce or not, Béarnaise is a rich sauce that compliments steaks wonderfully, but is also good with burgers, eggs, some fish varieties and even vegetables, asparagus particularly. The sauce is rich, flavorful and easy enough to make. Many of the recipes that you’ll find in cookbooks and online call for clarified butter, but you can substitute that with any good quality unsalted butter.
Béarnaise – mayonnaise-like sauce worth making
A child sauce of hollandaise, which is more or less a fancier mayonnaise, Béarnaise is made following a somewhat similar recipe.
The sauce asks for the following ingredients:
- 12 tablespoons or 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter
- ¼ cup white-wine vinegar
- ½ cup dry white wine
- 1 small shallot, peeled and roughly shopped
- ½ tsp freshly cracked black pepper or ½ tsp whole black peppercorns
- 1 ½ tbsp tarragon leaves, finely minced
- 2 egg yolks
- Kosher salt to taste
And here’s how to make Béarnaise:
- In a small saucepan combine vinegar, wine, shallots and pepper and bring to a simmer, cooking until liquid reduces to about 1 ½ tablespoons. Approximate cooking time is 15 minutes. Set aside the mixture to cool.
- Fill another saucepan up with about two inches of water and place over medium to high heat to bring to a boil.
- In a metal mixing bowl combine the mixture with 1 tbsp water and the egg yolks and whisk to combine.
- Turning the heat under the saucepan with boiling water to lowest put the bowl on top of the pan. Bottom of the bowl should not touch the water. Whisk the yolks continuously until they thicken. Usually, takes up to 7 minutes.
- Add in the melted butter, tablespoon at a time, continuing until all butter is added and the consistency of the sauce is thick and creamy. Occasionally remove the sauce off the pan to avoid overcooking the eggs.
- Finally, season with salt and add the chopped tarragon to serve.
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Béarnaise sauce is served immediately or kept warm for up to an hour before serving time. It is never cooled or reheated.