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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from butter, vinegar, egg yolks, salt, cayenne pepper, and ketchup, emulsified over hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the butter and divide it into 3 parts.

  2. In a saucepan, combine 1 part butter, vinegar, and egg yolks.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir over hot water until the butter begins to melt.

  2. Add the second part of the butter and stir until melted.

  3. Add the third part of the butter and withdraw when the sauce thickens.

  4. Season with salt, cayenne, and tomato ketchup.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + tomatotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat that gives the sauce its rich texture and smooth mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken into a creamy, sauce-like structure when gently heated.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Add the third part of the butter and withdraw when the sauce thickens. Egg yolk proteins set around 65 to 70 °C, so the sauce thickens quickly. Overheating scrambles the yolks and causes the emulsion to break, so the sauce should come off the heat as soon as it thickens.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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