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Sauce

Sauce Hollandaise

A creamy sauce made from butter, egg yolks, vinegar, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Reduce the vinegar with salt and pepper until you have 1 teaspoon of liquid.

  2. Remove from heat and add cold water and egg yolks, ensuring to remove any egg whites.

Cook and emulsify

  1. Return to low heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the yolks begin to thicken.

  2. Add 20 grams (about 1½ tablespoons) of butter and stir until melted.

  3. Repeat adding 20 grams of butter at a time, ensuring each addition is fully melted before adding the next.

  4. After the third addition of butter, add 1 tablespoon of cold water to prevent the sauce from curdling.

  5. If the sauce is too thick, add another tablespoon of cold water.

Finish

  1. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. White pepper + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce as they cook gently.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, which gives the sauce its smooth, silky body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Return to low heat and stir until the yolks begin to thicken. Egg yolks set at around 65°C (150°F) and scramble if overheated. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the heat even so the yolks thicken into a smooth emulsion rather than curdling.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, egg):

  1. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Capersbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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