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Sauce

Sauce Hollandaise

A creamy sauce made from butter, egg yolks, vinegar, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauce Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter with salt, nutmeg, and 1 cup of water over medium heat.

  2. In a separate dish, mix 2 tablespoons of vinegar with an equal amount of water.

  3. Add the vinegar mixture and 2 tablespoons of butter to the saucepan, mixing well.

  4. In a bowl, whisk the yolks of 4 eggs with a little water.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the sauce from heat once it stops boiling and stir in the egg yolk mixture.

  2. Add the juice of 1 lemon, strain the sauce, and serve.

  3. Optionally, add a pinch of cayenne for extra flavor.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and bind the butter into a smooth emulsion when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the butter and yolks.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and aroma that lifts the flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat but scramble if they get too hot. Removing the pan from heat and waiting until it stops boiling before stirring in the yolks lets them thicken smoothly into the emulsion.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, egg, lemon):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, egg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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