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Sauce Hollandaise À Froid

A cold hollandaise sauce made with egg yolks, butter, vinegar, peppercorns, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Sauce Hollandaise À Froid

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vinegar

  1. Infuse vinegar with peppercorns.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks.

  2. Gradually add the melted butter while whisking continuously off the heat.

  3. Once the sauce is thick, stir in salt and the strained vinegar infusion.

  4. Add cold water and keep the sauce warm in a double boiler or heat for 2 minutes while whisking.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their lecithin emulsifies the butter into the sauce and gives it body as it thickens.
Melted butter
Supplies the fat that makes the sauce rich, smooth and silky.
Vinegar
Adds acidity and sharpness that balances the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Gradually add the melted butter while whisking continuously. Egg yolks can only hold so much fat in emulsion. Adding the butter slowly while whisking lets the yolk lecithin bind each droplet. Adding it too fast can make the sauce split into greasy, separated layers.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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