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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, onion, vinegar, egg yolks, bay leaf, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tarragon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,568 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine bay leaf, onion, and vinegar in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, then cool.

  2. Rub butter and flour together in a double boiler, then gradually add the cooled mixture, stirring until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks one at a time, mixing gently.

  2. Reheat briefly, then add salt and white pepper.

  3. Strain and serve immediately.

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. Onion + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together788 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Tarragon + white peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a stable base that holds the sauce together.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and set gently with heat, giving the sauce its body and richness.
Tarragon vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the sauce's flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks can scramble if they get too hot. Removing the pan from heat before adding them, and mixing gently, lets them thicken smoothly and emulsify with the butter.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, tarragon, 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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