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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, boiling water, egg yolks, lemon juice or vinegar, and salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,816 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and mix in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the boiling water while stirring continuously.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks, lemon juice or vinegar, salad oil, and mustard if desired.

  4. Serve with fish.

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 + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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 richness and fat, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the water.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and set to give the sauce its creamy body.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.
Salad oil
Adds fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Remove from heat before adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble when too hot, which curdles the sauce. Taking the pan off the heat first lets the yolks thicken it gently and emulsify smoothly with the oil.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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