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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from butter, egg yolks, vinegar, and water, whisked over gentle heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and 118,967 recipes mention both. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the butter

  1. Wash the butter in cold water using a spoon.

  2. Divide the butter into three pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine one piece of butter, egg yolks, and vinegar.

  2. Place the saucepan in a larger pot of boiling water and stir constantly with a whisk until the butter melts.

  3. Add the second piece of butter and stir until thickened, then add the third piece.

  4. Finally, stir in the boiling water.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Egg + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and vinegar share little aroma chemistry, yet 12,922 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 richness and fat, giving the sauce its smooth, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the rich butter.

The step that matters

Keep the heat gentle while whisking in the butter. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot, which curdles the sauce. Gentle heat from the water bath lets the yolks thicken slowly while the butter emulsifies into them smoothly.

“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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