Skip to main content
Sauce

Mock Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made with vinegar, peppercorns, white sauce, lemon juice, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sauce and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mock Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Flavour the vinegar

  1. Put peppercorns in vinegar and heat until boiling, then remove the peppercorns.

Make the sauce

  1. Add white sauce.

  2. Cream ½ cup butter.

  3. Mix butter into the sauce.

  4. Beat 2 eggs.

  5. Stir eggs into the mixture.

Finish the sauce

  1. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then remove from heat.

  2. Gradually add remaining butter.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Eggs
Thicken the sauce and help hold the butter in a smooth emulsion.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky, smooth texture to the sauce.
White sauce
Gives the sauce body and a thicker base for the eggs and butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that cuts through the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the remaining butter gradually. Egg yolks bind with fat only when butter is added slowly and the mixture stays warm but not hot. Adding butter too fast or overheating can break the sauce, leaving it oily or scrambled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Pineapplefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sauce, butter, egg. 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.

More hollandaise sauce recipes

Mock 3 See all 212 →

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes