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Bearnaise Sauce
Four eggs (yolks only); four tablespoons of butter; one-half teaspoon of salt; one-half saltspoon of pepper; one tablespoon of tarragon vinegar; one teaspoon of chopped parsley; one teaspoon of chopped tarragon; one teaspoon of onion juice. Stir the butter in a hot cup until perfectly soft and creamy. Place the yolks and the salt and pepper in a small saucepan, and beat the eggs light with an egg-beater; then add one-third of the butter, and beat until smooth; add another third, and beat again; and then add the balance of the butter, and beat until all is perfectly smooth. Lastly add the vinegar and onion juice, and beat again. Place the saucepan in another of boiling water, and cook for three minutes, beating all the time with the egg-beater. Remove from the fire, put in the chopped parsley and tarragon, and use immediately.
BÉCHAMEL SAUCE, No. I-This is made of one ounce of butter; one ounce of flour; one pint of milk; one small onion; one-half ounce of lean raw ham; salt and pepper to suit. Slice the onion; place the butter in a saucepan and slightly color the onion in it; add the milk, stir until boiling, and set in a gentle heat to boil slowly for ten minutes. Strain and use. BÉCHAMEL SAUCE, No. 2-For this use one-half pint of veal stock; one-half pint of cream; two eggs (yolks only); two tablespoons of butter; one tablespoon of flour; salt and pepper to taste. Heat the butter, and when bubbling, stir in the flour; mix until smooth, taking care it does not brown. Add the stock and cream gradually, and stir until the liquid boils. Take from the fire, and add the salt and pepper and the well-beaten yolks. Let it stand in a warm place on the range two minutes, but do not boil after the eggs are added.
Three sauces printed as one entry: a béarnaise, then two béchamels of different ambition. All are workable, though the first béchamel has a typographical gap worth knowing about before you start.
- The hinge: gentle, constant heatEverything here depends on keeping egg yolks below the point at which they set. Use a bowl or pan over water that is barely trembling rather than at a rolling boil, keep the whisk moving, and pull the sauce the moment it thickens and coats the whisk — around 160-165F. Three minutes is a guide, not a rule.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the pepper here is a scant pinch. Increase it to taste; period seasoning is light by current standards.
- Flour missing from Béchamel No. 1The ingredient list calls for an ounce of flour but the method never adds it. Cook the flour into the butter with the onion for a minute or two before the milk goes in, or the sauce will not thicken at all. An ounce each of butter and flour to a pint of milk gives a medium pouring béchamel.
- Butter proportion in the béarnaiseFour tablespoons of butter to four yolks is far leaner than a modern béarnaise, which runs closer to a stick of butter per three yolks. The result is a light, distinctly eggy sauce rather than a rich emulsion; add more softened butter, a spoonful at a time, if you want the familiar texture.
- Tarragon vinegar and onion juiceTarragon vinegar is still sold, or steep a few bruised sprigs in white wine vinegar for a week. Onion juice means grated onion pressed through a sieve or squeezed in cloth — a teaspoon takes roughly a quarter of a small onion.
- No reductionModern béarnaise begins by boiling vinegar, wine, shallot and tarragon stems down to a spoonful. Here the vinegar goes in raw, so the sauce is sharper and less aromatic. Reducing first, then straining, is the single change that brings it closest to what a restaurant serves.
- The raw hamThe half ounce of lean raw ham in Bechamel No. 1 means uncooked cured ham, and like the flour it never appears in the method. Cook it in the butter with the onion for savour; it is strained out rather than eaten.
- Yield and useThe bearnaise makes something under a cup, enough for four modest servings, and will not reheat: the instruction to use it immediately is sound. Each bechamel makes about a pint. Bechamel No. 2, enriched with cream and yolks, is closer to what would now be called a sauce supreme or parisienne and suits poached chicken, veal or eggs.
Bearnaise is generally traced to the kitchens of Le Pavillon Henri IV at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the 1830s or 1840s, the name honouring Bearn, the birthplace of Henri IV - a tidy story that appears in most sources without hard documentation. Bechamel carries the name of Louis de Bechameil, a financier and steward in the household of Louis XIV, though the sauce is usually credited to the royal cooks rather than the man commemorated. That both appear, with French spellings and accents intact, in an American domestic cook book of the period says something about the prestige attached to classical French sauces in home kitchens. Early bechamel was a richer, stock-and-cream preparation before the plain milk-and-roux version became standard, and the two numbered recipes here may reflect that.