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Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, and seasonings, thickened over gentle heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the flour and butter together.

  2. Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition.

  3. Stir in the salt, cayenne, and boiling water.

  4. Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice.

  2. Stir in the chopped parsley before serving.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce as they cook, setting it into a smooth custard.
Flour
Stabilizes the emulsion and helps the sauce thicken without breaking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg flavor.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly until thickened. Egg yolks thicken gently at moderate heat. If the sauce gets too hot, the yolks can scramble and curdle, so constant stirring over indirect heat keeps it smooth.

“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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