What would you do if you were served a broken bearnaise?
Would you think that it was a mistake and send it back to the kitchen?
Or would you recall that Fernand Point wrote in Ma Gastronomie "It takes years of practice for the result to be perfect" and chalk it up to inexperience?
What if you learned that it was broken intentionally?
Would you be curious to know why?
Or outraged that someone would mess with 170 years of tradition?
Can something be fixed if it's not broken?
Or does it need to be broken to be fixed?
scallop mousseline
fennel: bulb, fronds, green seeds, pollen
smoked bearnaise
caviar
Playing with Fire and Water 
Beautiful photo! When I read your first sentence I thought this would have been a nasty mess resembling infant vomit but you truly pulled off culinary artistry. I just wanted to say I am really enjoying following your blog.
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You know how sometimes you come across a photo of some dish, and it inspires you before you even knowing what’s in the dish or whether the flavors go together at all? The photo itself instantly conjures harmonious flavor combinations, and you are inspired to someday duplicate them. You file the photo away mentally as a plating you’d love to do some day, or perhaps you file away in your browser’s bookmarks in your file of photos to come back to when you’re feeling blocked. Well, this photo did that for me. Absolutely beautiful!
The only thing I’d have done differently in the plating is to cut off the ends of the mousseline to make flat sides to the cylinder.
What gave you the idea to break the bearnaise? How does a broken bearnaise work better in the dish than an intact bearnaise, in your opinion?
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Actually, the bearnaise broke while I was distracted by a phone call. I intended to start over, but as I looked at it, then plated it and tasted it, the questions started coming. I found the broken bearnaise to be more compelling– yet just as delicious– as a perfectly emulsified one.
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I think they call a sauce “broken” for a reason. Broken Hollandaise and it’s derivatives don’t have the right mouth feel.
They lose the lux feeling of velvet on the tongue, and I find it distracting.
I would ask the server why they served a broken sauce, but probably not send it back. I might not return to that restaurant. If you’re going to put a component on a dish, it should be done properly.
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I don’t know ChefMattRock. Without “what if…” we’d only be eating hunks of raw meat and foraged raw fruits and vegetables.
Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that, but “what if…” sometimes leads to “that’s awesome”.
Maybe the traditionalist gives it another name, doesn’t call it bearnaise or adds the “broken” modifier, but a new texture based on a familiar flavor doesn’t automatically translate as bad.
If the flavor and texture works, who really cares if it’s completely traditional or not (outside of a setting where it obviously needs to be such as a place billing itself as authentic and/or traditional)? I mean, it’s just short of impossible to get a seat at El Bulli and tons of people, not all of them wealthy, spend $225+ on dinner at Alinea and those places play with new presentations and textural plays on familiar flavors every day.
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I think it really depends on if the resulting product is successful, appealing,and works then you’d need to define it in some way to clasify that it is not the original preparation. When I was cutting my teeth in the kitchen, nothing broken besides a vinaigrette or the brouwned butter on a sole meuniere was acceptable- now, quite the opposite!
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i myself am bound by too much tradition in cooking to attempt to justify a broken sauce but amend you for questioning, doing and standing by it. it is beautiful. and nothing stands out on a plate better than confidence. Discipline should be humbled by curiosity. Bravo for cooking outside the box, regardless of those among us that are stuck in it. cheers
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Assuming it tastes as good as it looks, it appears to work here because you’re a compositional magician. But I doubt most chefs could pull this off.
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I agree with you Larry. To try to justify a broken sauce is shameful. However, if it is written on the menu as a creative and different form of said sauce then the diner gets what is expected and has an opportunity to try a broken sauce. My guess is that many people if any have never had an opportunity to try a broken sauce because it usually is never served.
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