Hollandaise and béarnaise sauces have some of the same ingredients and have similar uses — but they're not the same. So what's the difference? Let's break it down:
Hollandaise vs. Béarnaise: What's the Difference?
Both hollandaise and béarnaise sauces are made by emulsifying two ingredients that don't typically blend well together: butter and water. They both contain egg yolks and an acid to balance out the richness. It's what happens next that sets them apart: Hollandaise gets its acidity from lemon juice (sometimes vinegar) and is usually seasoned with salt, white pepper, and cayenne pepper.
Béarnaise, meanwhile, builds upon hollandaise with white wine vinegar, shallots, tarragon, and other fresh herbs.
Hollandaise, also known as Dutch sauce, isn't Dutch at all, no matter what its name suggests — it's actually about as French as a sauce can be. One of the five French mother sauces, the first documented recipe is from 1651 in François Pierre de la Varenne's Le Cuisinier François.
"Make a sauce with some good fresh butter, a little vinegar, salt, and nutmeg, and an egg yolk to bind the sauce; take care that it doesn't curdle," La Varenne instructs in the recipe for "asparagus with fragrant sauce."
Hollandaise is pale yellow, smooth, and creamy. It's often used to to eggs Benedict, asparagus, and fish.
Béarnaise is considered to be the "child" of hollandaise. Invented only 200 years ago, it's a relatively new French sauce. Chef Jules Collinet is credited with creating it in 1836 for the opening of Le Pavillon Henri IV, a restaurant just outside of Paris that was home to French royalty in the 17th century. Inspired by the restaurant's royal heritage, Collinet named his new sauce "béarnaise" after Henri IV. The popular king, who is believed to have been a lover of fine foods, was born in a region of France called Béarn.
Béarnaise is pale yellow, smooth and creamy, and flecked with green from the fresh herbs. It's often served with grilled meat.
How to Make Hollandaise Sauce and Béarnaise Sauce
To understand how the sauces are made, you have to first understand emulsification. An emulsion is a mixture of two liquids (oil and water, in this case) that would ordinarily not mix together. Certain substances act as emulsifiers, which means they force the liquids together. The egg yolks, which contain lecithin, act as an emulsifier in hollandaise and béarnaise. Lecithin is a fatty substance that is soluble in both fat and water.
Why are you getting a chemistry lesson? Well, it's important that your sauce emulsifies and does not coagulate. Coagulation, or thickening from a fluid to a solid, is what happens when you make custards and puddings.
If you've ever heard that hollandaise is tricky, this is why: It's very easy to cook it incorrectly and end up with a curdled mess. To make these sauces properly, you must gently heat your ingredients while whisking constantly.
Check out our best hollandaise sauce recipes here and our best béarnaise sauce here.
It's what happens next that sets them apart: Hollandaise gets its acidity from lemon juice (sometimes vinegar) and is usually seasoned with salt, white pepper, and cayenne pepper. Béarnaise, meanwhile, builds upon hollandaise with white wine vinegar, shallots, tarragon, and other fresh herbs.
It is regarded as a "child" of hollandaise sauce. The difference is only 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.
Buttery, silky with the enigmatic flavour of tarragon and a sharp kick of vinegar, bearnaise is arguably the most elegant sauce to have emerged from the French kitchen.
We cannot ignore the value of tarragon's earthy notes nor the subtle umami from the cooked shallots. Likely, it is the forwardness of the acid in béarnaise that makes it so delectable when paired with steak or other fatty meats.
Hollandaise sauce is a rich and creamy sauce that has been a staple in French cuisine for centuries. Made from butter, egg yolks, and lemon juice, Hollandaise sauce has a tangy and buttery flavor that can elevate any dish.
To make Béarnaise, you start with a reduction of wine, vinegar, shallots, and tarragon. Set it aside while you make the hollandaise, which is a semi-permanent emulsion of egg yolks and clarified butter.Stir the herbal reduction into hollandaise, and voila! You have Béarnaise sauce.
Béarnaise sauce is commonly paired with grilled fish or steak, but it's just as delicious on roasted vegetables or eggs Benedict. Spoon this silky, herby sauce over roasted asparagus, steamed broccoli, or grilled mushrooms for a sophisticated dinner party side.
Chimichurri sauce hails from Uruguay and Argentina. It's commonly made with olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, red pepper flakes, finely chopped parsley, and dried or fresh oregano.
Poached or sauteed chicken breasts are served with a rich buttery Hollandaise sauce are served with hot cooked rice. The chicken breasts are simply poached or sauteed then they're placed on rice, topped with rich homemade hollandaise sauce.
Add the fat too fast and you break your emulsion. Heat it up too much and it turns into scrambled eggs. Don't heat it enough and you'll have a thin, wet sauce instead of a rich, meat-coating sauce.
One common hollandaise mistake is overcooking the egg yolks, and there's no coming back from that. But the most common problem is that the emulsion breaks, and you see streaks of liquid butter instead of a uniformly creamy sauce.
If you are concerned about salmonella, use pasteurized eggs or cook the eggs to at least 165F to kill any bacteria; however, this can potentially cause the eggs to scramble. Egg yolks start to coagulate around 149F (65C) and will start to curdle around 160-170F (yolks completely curdle at 185F (85C).
A broken hollandaise sauce is thin with a grainy appearance. The likely causes are overheating, adding the butter too quickly, or adding too much butter. If a sauce seems on the verge of breaking, you'll see oily butter begin to accumulate on the edge of the sauce.
Hollandaise sauce is unlike the mother sauces we've mentioned so far, due to a liquid and a thickening agent, plus flavorings. Hollandaise is a tangy, buttery sauce made by slowly whisking clarified butter into warm egg yolks. So the liquid here is the clarified butter and the thickening agent is the egg yolks.
Bechamel starts with a light roux, and is made with milk. It gets its flavor from onion, bay leaf, snd clove, along with a hint of nutmeg and white pepper. Hollandaise is a liaison of egg yolks and butter, flavored with lemon juice, white pepper and a dash of cayenne, according to Julia Child.
According to history, France couldn't produce its own butter during the First World War and imported it from Holland – which led to it being known as Hollandaise.
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