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Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, lemon juice, vinegar, butter, and salt, served with boiled fish.

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

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl and season with salt, lemon juice, and vinegar.

  2. In a saucepan, thicken the boiling water.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the butter to the thickened water and remove from heat.

  2. Slowly stir in the egg mixture, mixing continuously.

  3. Taste and add more vinegar if needed.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled fish.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, creating a smooth, silky texture when emulsified.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity and helps balance the sauce's richness.

The step that matters

Slowly stir in the egg mixture, mixing continuously. Adding the yolks too fast or letting the sauce get too hot can scramble the eggs. Gradual addition while stirring lets the yolks blend evenly into the butter and water, giving a smooth emulsion.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits about as well
  2. Currantfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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