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Hollandaise Soup

A creamy soup made with veal or chicken stock, peas, carrots, cucumber, butter, flour, egg yolks, cream, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Hollandaise Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the flour and cook for a minute.

  2. Gradually add the stock and bring to a boil, then simmer for a short time.

Finish and serve

  1. In a heated tureen, mix the egg yolks and cream.

  2. Slowly add the seasoned soup just below boiling point along with the cooked vegetables.

  3. Sprinkle chopped parsley on top 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Peas + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Carrot + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and give it a smooth, rich texture when gently heated.
Butter
Provides fat and flavour, and with the flour forms the base that thickens the stock.
Flour
Thickens the stock when cooked briefly in butter to form a roux.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the egg yolk mixture.
Veal or chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavour.

The step that matters

Slowly add the seasoned soup to the egg yolk and cream mixture. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot too fast. Adding hot soup gradually and keeping it just below boiling tempers the yolks so the soup stays smooth and thickened.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, butter, cucumber, flour, parsley, egg):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, butter, cucumber, flour, parsley, egg. 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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