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Bernais Sauce
(For steak, filet mignon, cold meat or tuna fish.) Mix thoroughly four yolks of eggs, four tablespoonfuls of Pompeian Olive Oil, four tablespoonfuls of water, one tablespoonful of vinegar, half a teaspoonful of salt, onefifth of a teaspoonful of onion juice and two teaspoonfuls of chopped parsley.
Place in a double boiler and cook for three minutes, beating constantly with an egg beater. Take from the fire at the end of three minutes and add the chopped parsley. The sauce should be served as soon as finished.
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A light, water-slackened egg sauce rather than the butter emulsion the name suggests. It comes together fast and cannot be held, so have the meat ready before you start.
- The hinge: gentle heat, constant beatingWater in the lower pan should be hot but barely trembling, never at a rolling boil. Four yolks with only four tablespoons of oil have little fat to protect them, so the moment the beater stops the yolks scramble.
- Judge it by temperature, not the clockThree minutes is a guide for a thin sauce over hot water; the useful marker is 160F, at which the yolks are safe and the sauce coats a spoon. If your eggs are not pasteurized and the sauce thickens before that, keep it on the heat until the thermometer agrees.
- The parsley is listed twiceIt appears in the mixing list and again as an addition after cooking. Hold all two teaspoons back until the pan comes off the heat, so the parsley stays green.
- Onion juiceA fifth of a teaspoon is about a millilitre, a very small quantity. Grate a piece of onion on a fine grater and squeeze the pulp, or press a wedge through a garlic press.
- Not a classical bearnaiseThere is no tarragon, no shallot and no vinegar reduction here, and no butter at all. Treat it as a warm oil-and-yolk sauce; if you want the classic flavour, steep a teaspoon of dried tarragon in the vinegar and warm it before adding.
- Choice of oilThe book is selling olive oil, and the oil is the dominant flavour. A mild, fresh oil works; a strongly peppery late-harvest oil will fight the eggs.
- Yield and servingAbout three quarters of a cup, enough for four servings of steak or filet. It breaks and turns grainy on reheating, which is why the original insists on serving it at once.
The spelling Bernais for béarnaise turns up in American cookbooks of this period, when French sauce names were often reproduced by ear. The sauce is traditionally traced to the kitchens at Saint-Germain-en-Laye outside Paris in the 1830s, named for the Béarn region as a nod to Henri IV, though the story is traditional rather than documented. What appears here is an American adaptation: the butter that defines the classical version has been replaced entirely by olive oil and water, in a booklet published to promote a brand of olive oil. Recipe pamphlets of this kind were a standard advertising form. The suggested pairings — steak, filet mignon, cold meat, tuna fish — show the sauce being offered well beyond its French remit.