Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Sea Bass, Sauce Hollandaise

Boiled sea bass served with a lemon‑egg hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Boiled Sea Bass, Sauce Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Poach the fish

  1. Fill a pot with water and add salt.

  2. Bring the water to a boil.

  3. Add the whole sea bass and cook until done, about 15‑20 minutes.

Make the hollandaise

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks and lemon juice until thick.

  3. Slowly add the melted butter to the egg mixture, whisking constantly.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and white pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the boiled sea bass with the hollandaise sauce drizzled on top.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Sea bass
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in simmering water until flaky.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with melted butter to thicken the sauce into a smooth, rich hollandaise.
Butter
Provides fat that, emulsified with egg yolk, gives the sauce its creamy richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the melted butter to the yolks. Butter must be added slowly while whisking constantly so the yolk proteins can emulsify the fat. Adding it too fast, or letting the yolks overheat, can cause the sauce to split or scramble.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes