[Sca-cooks] Hollandaise, was Bearnaise Sauce

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Gorgeous Muiredach:
>>That's a common restaurant expedient, but technically, Hollandaise is
>>not a mother sauce for Bearnaise, one being, generally, lemon-based,
>>and the other, vinegar-based.
>
>Always bug me when I see references to using a vinegar reduction for
>hollandaise..  But then, I'm stuck up that way (Finn, shaddup!)

I suppose you _could_ make a mildly vinegar-laced, generic, basically
unnamed mother sauce, and then finish it with either a
vinegar/shallot/tarragon reduction and chopped tarragon, for
Bearnaise, or with lemon, for Hollandaise. The prevailing views seem
to allow for some vinegar, in addition to lemon, for Hollandaise, but
no lemon for Bearnaise. I guess it overpowers the tarragon.

But then, nowadays, this would almost never be necessary. How many
restaurants today have both sauces on the menu?

I think the worst "Bearnaise" I've ever had was at the Grand Central
Station Oyster Bar, a fine seafood restaurant whose excellence lies
in the consistent quality of its raw ingredients. Fish so fresh and
sweet it's virtually impossible to destroy it, no matter how hard you
try. And try they did, on this occasion, visibly hacking up (line of
sight through the kitchen service window was random but clear)
tarragon in vinegar from a jar and adding it to the hours-old (and
looking it) Hollandaise from lunch... slightly curdled and broken,
with little hunks of tarragon stem, and way too acidic.

I forgave them when, the next time I was there, I found it was raw
Danish herring season...

Adamantius

--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER