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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, water, egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Pour in the cold water and stir steadily until thickened.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add salt and pepper, then remove from heat.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and lemon juice.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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 fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells and gelatinises in the hot liquid.
Cold water
Provides the liquid that the flour thickens into a smooth, pourable base.
Egg yolks
Add richness and, as their proteins set gently, help thicken and emulsify the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolk proteins begin to set around 65 to 70 °C. Adding beaten yolks off the heat and stirring steadily lets them thicken gently and blend in smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

“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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