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Hollandaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from butter, egg yolk, salt, cayenne pepper, boiling water, cider vinegar, and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan that fits into a kettle.

  2. Whisk in the egg yolk, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the boiling water and cider vinegar, then cook and stir until slightly thickened.

  4. Add a few drops of lemon juice if desired.

Hold and serve

  1. Keep the sauce hot and covered to prevent a crust from forming.

  2. Serve with 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the melted butter and thickens the sauce as it cooks gently.
Butter
Provides fat for a rich texture and smooth, glossy mouthfeel.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Cook and stir until slightly thickened. The egg yolk thickens as it heats, but too much heat can scramble it. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth and prevents lumps.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, pepper, cider, vinegar):

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

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