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Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from egg yolks, lemon juice, butter, cayenne pepper, and hot water, whisked into a custard-like consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the butter

  1. Work the butter in a bowl of cold water until it reaches a waxy consistency.

  2. Divide the butter into three equal pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine one piece of butter, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

  2. Place the saucepan in a larger pan with hot water.

  3. Stir constantly with a whisk until the butter blends with the yolks.

  4. Add the second piece of butter as the sauce thickens.

  5. Add the third piece.

  6. Continue stirring until the mixture reaches the consistency of boiled custard.

  7. Slowly add hot water and seasoning while beating constantly.

  8. Keep the water in the larger saucepan just below boiling.

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

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

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together85,593 recipes

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

Egg and lemon share little aroma chemistry, yet 44,316 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Unsalted butter
Provides fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the sauce its rich, smooth body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Hot water
Loosens the sauce and keeps it thin enough to pour while it is beaten.

The step that matters

Keep the water just below boiling. Egg yolks thicken from gentle heat but scramble if overheated. Too much heat curdles the sauce, so the water bath must stay just below boiling and the sauce must be stirred constantly.

“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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