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Hollandaise Potatoes

A potato dish topped with a sauce made from butter, egg yolks, milk, and lemon or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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.

  2. Boil the potatoes in slightly salted water for 20 minutes without breaking them.

  3. Drain the potatoes and let them cool slightly.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Strain the mixture into another saucepan and add the butter.

  3. Whisk in the egg yolks over low heat until the sauce thickens like cream.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice or vinegar.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the potatoes and 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 base that holds and absorbs the rich sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the sauce as they gently cook.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Whisk the egg yolks over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Gentle, constant whisking over low heat lets them thicken into a smooth emulsion rather than curdling.

Swap the potato

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

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

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