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Hollandaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made by whisking flour, butter, and boiling water, then adding eggs, oil, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Olive M. Hulse · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,067 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix one tablespoonful of flour and one teaspoonful of butter over the fire until smooth.

  2. Add gradually one pint of boiling water until the consistency is that of cream.

  3. Boil for two or three minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Season with one saltspoonful of salt, half a teaspoonful of mustard, and a quarter of a spoonful of pepper.

  2. Take from the fire and add the yolks of two eggs well beaten, mixing until smooth.

  3. Add slowly three tablespoonfuls of oil and one tablespoonful of vinegar.

  4. If lemon juice is used instead of vinegar, the sauce is more delicate.

By Olive M. Hulse. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Eggs
Yolks emulsify with the oil and thicken the sauce as it is beaten.
Oil
Adds fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the sauce its rich body.
Flour
Thickens the boiled water into a smooth, creamy base.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty sauce.

The step that matters

Add the oil slowly. Egg yolks can only hold oil in suspension when it is added gradually while mixing. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, so the sauce separates and turns oily instead of smooth and thick.

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

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

  1. Shallotabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Chiveabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, pepper, butter, egg, vinegar. 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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