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Hollandaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and salt, thickened over a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA very moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and salt, beating thoroughly.

Cook and thicken

  1. Place the bowl in a saucepan of boiling water.

  2. Beat with an egg beater until the mixture thickens, about 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the boiling water while continuing to beat.

  4. Stir until the sauce thickens to a soft custard consistency.

  5. Remove from heat and stir for a few minutes, being careful not to overcook.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken into a soft custard when heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Remove from heat and stir for a few minutes, being careful not to overcook.. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but past a certain point they scramble, curdling the sauce. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep the custard smooth.

“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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