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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, butter, 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

  1. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Add the creamed butter, lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper, and boiling water.

  3. Heat the mixture over hot water until it thickens and becomes creamy.

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. Egg + buttertop 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 yolks
Emulsify the butter and water, and set into a thick, smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky, velvety mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat gently over hot water. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so if the sauce gets too hot it can curdle or scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Keep it over gentle heat and stir steadily.

“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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