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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from butter, egg yolk, lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 sauce

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg yolk and beat well.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Just before serving, add the boiling water.

  5. Place the bowl over boiling water and stir until the mixture thickens to custard consistency.

Serve

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together85,593 recipes

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

Egg and lemon share little aroma chemistry, yet 44,316 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

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the butter and sets into a thick, custard-like sauce when gently heated.
Butter
Provides fat that gives the sauce its rich texture and smooth body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps balance the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Thickening over boiling water. Egg yolk proteins set gradually as they warm. If the heat is too high, they scramble and the sauce curdles, so it should be stirred steadily until it reaches custard consistency.

“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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