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Sauce Hollandaise

A sauce made from butter, egg yolks, vinegar, water, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Sauce Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the reduction

  1. Combine salt, mignonette pepper, vinegar, and water in a small saucepan.

  2. Reduce the mixture by three‑quarters over heat.

  3. Move the saucepan to the side of the heat.

Emulsify the sauce

  1. Add a spoonful of fresh water and the egg yolks.

  2. Whisk until the yolks thicken to a cream‑like consistency.

  3. Remove the saucepan to a warm place.

  4. Gradually pour in the melted butter while stirring briskly.

  5. Once the butter is absorbed, the sauce should be thick and firm.

  6. Adjust consistency with a little water if desired.

Finish and strain

  1. Finish with a drop of lemon juice.

  2. Strain through a fine sieve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Egg and lemon 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
Provides fat that gives the sauce its rich body and smooth mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Their proteins set around the emulsified butter, thickening and stabilising the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the emulsion stable.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the melted butter while stirring briskly. Adding butter too fast or without constant whisking can overwhelm the yolks, so the fat separates instead of forming a smooth emulsion. Slow addition and steady stirring let the yolk proteins surround the fat droplets, keeping the sauce thick and creamy.

“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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