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Hollandaise Potatoes

Potatoes served with a sauce of butter, egg yolks, milk, lemon, vinegar, peppercorns, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hollandaise Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel, wash, and cut the potatoes into uniform shapes, either with an apple corer, potato scoop, or by cutting into cubes.

  2. Boil the potatoes in slightly salted water for 20 minutes, ensuring they do not break.

  3. Drain and let cool slightly.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk or water with the peppercorns and salt.

  2. Strain into another saucepan.

  3. Add the butter and beaten egg yolks to the strained liquid.

  4. Cook over low heat until thickened like cream.

  5. Squeeze in the lemon juice or add vinegar.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the potatoes.

  2. Garnish with parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the dish that holds the sauce.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the sauce as they cook gently.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich butter and yolks.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg yolk sauce over low heat. Egg yolks set at moderate temperatures, so over high heat they scramble and curdle. Gentle, steady heat lets the yolks thicken smoothly while the butter emulsifies into the liquid.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, lemon, vinegar, parsley. 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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