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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, butter, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and parsley, 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: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,037 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Whip the egg yolks slightly.

  2. Place them in a double boiler.

  3. Gradually add the butter until fully melted.

Finish the sauce

  1. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  2. Stir in lemon juice, salt, pepper, and 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their lecithin emulsifies the melted butter, giving the sauce a thick, smooth structure.
Butter
Supplies the fat that makes the sauce rich, silky, and smooth on the palate.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and cuts through the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Add the butter gradually over gentle heat. Egg yolks thicken at moderate heat but scramble if they get too hot. Adding butter slowly lets the yolks emulsify it into a smooth sauce instead of splitting or curdling.

“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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