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Sauce

Hollandaise, or Dutch Sauce

A sauce made by whisking egg yolks into a roux of flour and butter, flavored with stock, salt, lemon juice or vinegar, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hollandaise, or Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

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

  2. Add the stock, salt, lemon juice or vinegar, and sugar; bring to a boil.

  3. Boil for about five minutes.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove from heat and thicken the sauce by whisking in the egg yolks.

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 + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and sets with heat.
Butter or fat
Adds richness and carries flavor, and combines with flour to form the base.
Soup or fish stock
Provides the liquid that the sauce is built on and seasons it.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set gently with heat, adding richness.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Whisking in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by setting when heated gently, but too much heat scrambles them into lumps. Removing the pan from the heat before whisking in the yolks lets them thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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