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Sauce Hollandaise--dutch Sauce

A creamy sauce made from egg yolks, butter, vinegar, and lemon, tempered over low heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Sauce Hollandaise--dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, reduce the white wine vinegar with the peppercorns until nearly dry.

  2. Remove the pan from heat and add the egg yolks and cold water.

  3. Place the saucepan in a bain-marie or over low heat.

Finish the sauce

  1. Whisk the mixture continuously while gradually adding the butter.

  2. Strain the sauce, season to taste, and add lemon juice before serving.

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. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Provides fat that, emulsified into the yolks, gives the sauce its rich, smooth body.
White wine vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the butter and yolks.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and aroma at the end, sharpening the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisking the butter into the yolks. If the heat is too high or the butter is added too fast, the yolks scramble and the emulsion breaks. Gentle heat and continuous whisking let the butter disperse as tiny droplets, keeping the sauce smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits about as well
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, egg, butter. 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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