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Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, butter, vinegar, lemon juice, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the reduction

  1. Boil vinegar with peppercorns until reduced by half.

  2. Strain and cool the vinegar.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine half the butter (cut into small pieces), egg yolks, a pinch of salt, and the cooled vinegar.

  2. Set the saucepan over boiling water and stir continuously with a wooden spoon until smooth.

  3. Strain the mixture into another saucepan.

  4. Return it to the boiling water, stirring steadily.

  5. Gradually add the remaining butter in small pieces and the stock.

  6. When the sauce is light and frothy, remove from heat and stir in lemon juice.

  7. 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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Butter
Provides fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the sauce its rich, smooth body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and fresh flavour at the end.

The step that matters

Keeping the yolks over gentle heat. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot, and the sauce breaks into greasy curds. Keep the water at a gentle simmer, not a hard boil, and stir constantly so the yolks thicken smoothly into an emulsion with the butter.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits about as well
  2. Currantfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, butter. 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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