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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from melted butter, egg yolks, cream, capers, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pan, combine melted butter and egg yolks.

  2. Place the pan in a larger pan with hot water.

  3. Whisk the mixture over heat until thick, ensuring it does not boil.

  4. Whip in double cream and chopped capers until hot and light.

  5. Add lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper, mixing well.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken gently as they heat, giving the sauce its body.
Melted butter
Provides the fat that gives the sauce its rich, smooth texture.
Double cream
Adds moisture and richness, making the sauce lighter and silkier when whipped in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Whisk over gentle heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they scramble and curdle, and the emulsion breaks. Indirect heat from the water bath and constant whisking keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Capersthe original

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