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Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, butter, and vinegar, thickened over a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Reduce the vinegar to 1 tablespoon.

  2. Make up to 3 tablespoons with water.

  3. Pour the vinegar mixture over the egg yolks.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt half the butter in a small basin.

  2. Add the egg mixture to the melted butter.

  3. Place the basin in a pan of hot water.

  4. Stir until thick.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Add the remaining butter.

  7. If the sauce is too thick, add a little hot water.

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. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. White wine + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and set into a thick, smooth sauce when gently heated.
Butter
Provides fat that makes the sauce rich and gives it a smooth, silky texture.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Stir until thick over gentle heat. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot, so the basin should sit in hot water rather than direct heat. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and lets the yolks thicken smoothly into an emulsion with the butter.

“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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