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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made with melted butter, flour, egg yolks, cream, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine melted butter and flour in a bowl; cook until smooth and let cool.

  2. Add egg yolks and cream to the mixture and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a double boiler and cook until thick.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice just 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and helps give the sauce body and structure.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken as they gently heat, setting the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, mellowing the sauce and making it silkier.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the yolk mixture in the double boiler until thick. Egg yolks thicken between roughly 65 and 80°C, but overheating scrambles them into lumps. Gentle, indirect heat from the double boiler lets the sauce thicken smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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