Béarnaise sauce Béarnaise sauce Béarnaise sauce (; ) is a sauce made of clarified butter emulsified in egg yolks and white wine vinegar and flavored with herbs. It is considered to be a "child" of the mother Hollandaise sauce, one of the five mother sauces in the French haute cuisine repertoire. The difference is only in the flavoring: Béarnaise uses shallot, chervil, peppercorns, and tarragon in a reduction of vinegar and wine, while Hollandaise is more stripped down, using a reduction of lemon juice or white wine. (One means of preparing Béarnaise, see below, is to start with Hollandaise and add the
French cuisine cooks' guild regulations allowed for this movement. During the 16th and 17th centuries, French cuisine assimilated many new food items from the New World. Although they were slow to be adopted, records of banquets show Catherine de' Medici (1519–1589?) serving sixty-six turkeys at one dinner. The dish called cassoulet has its roots in the New World discovery of haricot beans, which are central to the dish's creation, but had not existed outside of the New World until its exploration by Christopher Columbus. Haute cuisine (, "high cuisine") has foundations during the 17th century with a chef named La Varenne. As