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Sauce

Sauce Hollandaise

A creamy sauce made from butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper, and water, thickened over gentle heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sauce Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Stir in the egg yolks one at a time.

  3. Add the lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Place the bowl over a pan of boiling water, beating constantly with an egg beater.

  5. When it begins to thicken, gradually stir in the boiling water.

  6. Continue until the sauce is as thick as soft custard.

  7. Do not let it remain on the fire too long to avoid curdling.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Lemon and egg 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

Butter
Provides fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the rich butter.

The step that matters

Keep the heat gentle while beating. Egg yolks thicken at low temperatures but curdle if overheated. Constant beating over moderate heat spreads the heat evenly and keeps the sauce smooth, so it should not be left on the fire too long.

“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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