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Sauce Hollandaise

A rich sauce made from butter, flour, veal stock, egg yolks, lemon, and butter, whisked and heated gently.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sauce Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan until it bubbles.

  2. Whisk in the flour and let it bubble until cooked.

  3. Stir in the veal stock (or boiling water) and bring to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat and gradually whisk in the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Return to low heat for a few moments until the eggs are set, but do not boil.

  6. Remove from heat, stir in the lemon juice and the additional butter, and mix thoroughly until smooth.

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. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they 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 and thicken the sauce as they set over gentle heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a stable base that helps hold the sauce together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich egg and butter flavour.

The step that matters

Return to low heat until the eggs are set, but do not boil. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but above about 70°C they scramble and curdle. Gentle heat and constant whisking keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, butter, flour, veal, egg. 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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