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Dessert

Chicken Hollandaise

A buttery sauce made with egg yolks, lemon juice, and chicken broth, served with graham toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Chicken Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cook the chopped onion in the butter for 1 minute.

  2. Add the cornstarch and cook until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the hot chicken broth, stirring constantly.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, then add the chopped celery.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, then mix in the chopped chicken.

Serve

  1. Serve with graham toast.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the sauce, adding richness and body when heated gently.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated with it.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the sauce's savory flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Chicken
Adds meaty body and savory flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring steadily and keeping the heat gentle lets the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly instead of curdling it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, lemon, pepper, parsley, chicken, celery. 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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