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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made by emulsifying butter, egg, salad oil, lemon juice, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the butter sauce and set it aside on the stove.

Finish the sauce

  1. Cautiously add the beaten egg to the butter sauce while stirring constantly.

  2. Once the egg is fully incorporated, add the salad oil drop by drop, continuing to stir.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and white pepper, then 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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 sauce
Supplies the rich fat that gives the sauce its body and flavour.
Egg
Its yolk lecithin emulsifies the fat and water, and its proteins thicken the sauce.
Salad oil
Adds extra fat that helps build a smooth, stable emulsion when added slowly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the richness of the butter and egg.

The step that matters

Adding the egg to the butter sauce. Egg proteins set when they get too hot, so the egg can scramble. Adding it cautiously while stirring constantly keeps the heat even and lets the yolk blend into a smooth, emulsified sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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