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Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made by emulsifying butter, flour, egg yolks, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix equal parts of butter and flour in a saucepan over medium heat until smooth.

  2. Add a little boiling water and stir until combined.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove from heat and slowly add the yolks of 2 eggs, stirring continuously.

  2. Season with nutmeg and lemon juice to taste.

  3. Ensure the sauce is thick and smooth, similar to the consistency of cream.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 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 fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Starch that thickens the butter and water as the sauce heats.
Egg yolks
Proteins thicken the sauce as they set and help emulsify the butter into it.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Removing the pan from the heat and stirring constantly lets the yolks thicken gently and blend smoothly into the sauce instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, nutmeg. 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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