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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, broth, egg yolks, onion juice, and lemon juice, served with fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Blend in the flour.

  3. Slowly add the chicken or veal broth, stirring until smooth.

  4. Beat in the egg yolks.

  5. Add the onion juice and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve as a sauce for 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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth base that holds the sauce together.
Chicken or veal broth
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, carrying its savory flavor.
Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce, giving it a creamy, cohesive texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg flavors.

The step that matters

Beat in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Add them to a warm, not boiling, base and stir steadily.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, chicken, 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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