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Melted Butter Dressing
2 raw egg yolks 6 tablespoons butter 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 4 tarragon leaves chopped fine 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice Put the egg yolks with 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan and set over hot water, stir rapidly until the butter is melted and the sauce begins to thicken; add 2 tablespoons of butter and continue stirring to a cream, add the remainder of butter, a bit at a time, seasonings and minced tarragon leaves. The lemon should be added just before serving.
This is a hollandaise in all but name, and the tarragon pushes it toward béarnaise. Everything depends on keeping the egg yolks below the point where they scramble.
- The hinge: gentle heat"Set over hot water" means a bowl over barely simmering water, not water at a rolling boil, and the bowl must not touch the water. The sauce is done when it coats the back of a spoon; pull it off the heat the moment it thickens or the yolks will granulate.
- Butter in three stagesThe staged addition 2 tablespoons, then 2, then the rest a bit at a time is the emulsion technique, not fussiness. Cold or barely softened butter is easier to control than melted; each addition should disappear before the next goes in.
- Six tablespoonsThat is three-quarters of a stick, or about 85 g, for two yolks — a lean ratio by modern hollandaise standards, which generally use rather more butter per yolk. The result is looser and more sharply eggy, which suits it to salad.
- TarragonFour fresh leaves is a whisper. Fresh tarragon varies enormously in strength; taste and add more if the anise note does not come through. Dried tarragon is a poor substitute here and should be steeped in the lemon juice first if used at all.
- Lemon lastThe recipe adds the acid at the very end, just before serving, rather than with the yolks. Half a teaspoon is very little, and many palates will want more.
- If it breaksTake it off the heat, drop in an ice cube or a teaspoon of cold water and whisk hard. If that fails, start a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and beat the broken sauce into it a spoonful at a time.
- EggsThe yolks are cooked, but only just, and the finished sauce sits in the danger zone if held. Make it within half an hour of serving, keep it barely warm, and do not reheat leftovers. Pasteurized yolks are sensible for anyone feeding the very young, the elderly, or anyone pregnant or immune-compromised.
- Yield and useAbout half a cup enough to dress a salad for four, or to spoon over asparagus, broccoli or poached fish. It is served warm, not chilled, so dress sturdy greens or cooked vegetables rather than delicate lettuce.
Warm butter-and-yolk sauces of this kind were catalogued in nineteenth-century American and English cookery under a range of workmanlike names "" "melted butter dressing," "Dutch sauce" " before hollandaise settled into general English use. The tarragon here is what distinguishes it: in classical French practice, tarragon plus an acid reduction is what turns hollandaise into béarnaise, and this recipe sits somewhere between the two, using plain lemon juice rather than a vinegar and shallot reduction. Its placement in a salad chapter reflects a period when "salad" covered cooked vegetables and cold meats dressed warm as readily as it covered raw greens, and when a boiled or thickened dressing was arguably thought more respectable in an American household kitchen than an oil-based one.