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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, broth, egg yolks, onion juice, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,814 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Blend in the flour.

  3. Slowly add the chicken or veal broth, stirring until smooth.

  4. Cook until thickened, then remove from heat.

Finish the sauce

  1. Beat in the egg yolks, onion juice, and lemon juice.

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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 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 fat and richness, and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a smooth, stable base.
Chicken or veal broth
Provides the liquid and savoury body of the sauce.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and thicken the sauce into a creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Beat in the egg yolks after removing the sauce from heat. Egg yolk proteins set at high temperature, so they can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Beating them in off the heat lets them thicken gently and emulsify with the butter into a smooth sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  2. Leekbetter flavor fit
  3. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, chicken, egg, lemon. 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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