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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from butter, egg, oil, lemon juice, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and 15,338 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Prepare the butter sauce and set it aside on the stove.

Emulsify and serve

  1. Cautiously add the beaten egg to the butter sauce while stirring constantly.

  2. Once the egg is fully incorporated, add the salad oil drop by drop while continuing to stir.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and white pepper, then 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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Butter and sauce share little aroma chemistry, yet 15,338 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 sauce
Provides the rich fat base that the rest of the sauce is built on.
Egg
Its proteins thicken the sauce and help bind the butter and oil into an emulsion.
Salad oil
Adds extra fat that helps stabilise the emulsion and gives a smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg to the warm butter sauce. Egg proteins set when overheated, so the egg can scramble if added too fast or left unstirred. Adding it slowly while stirring keeps it dispersed and smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Capersbetter flavor fit
  3. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, egg, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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