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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, paprika, and hot water, cooked over a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and 41,227 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg yolks and beat well together.

  3. Slowly add the lemon juice, salt, paprika, and hot water while continuing to cream the mixture.

  4. Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens to a creamy consistency.

  5. Remove from heat and beat with a whisk for about five minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with fish or cold meats.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the emulsion.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and set into a thick, creamy structure when gently heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the richness and brightens the flavor.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken with gentle heat but scramble if they get too hot. Constant stirring over indirect heat keeps the temperature low and even so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillaabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Coconutabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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