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Sauce

Sauce Hollandaise

A buttery sauce made with egg yolks, vinegar, and lemon, emulsified over gentle heat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sauce Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the reduction

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the salt, mignonette pepper, vinegar, and water. Reduce by three-quarters over heat.

  2. Move the saucepan to the side of the heat and add a spoonful of fresh water and the egg yolks.

  3. Whisk until the yolks thicken to a cream-like consistency.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove the saucepan to a warm area and gradually pour in the butter while stirring briskly.

  2. Once the butter is absorbed, the sauce should be thick and firm. Optionally, adjust the consistency with a little water.

  3. Finish with a drop of lemon juice and strain through a fine sieve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Butter
Provides fat that emulsifies with the yolks, giving the sauce its rich body and smooth texture.
Egg yolks
Their proteins set gently with heat and emulsify the butter, thickening the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Whisking the yolks over heat. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot, so the saucepan should sit off the direct heat while whisking. Gentle warmth thickens the yolks smoothly, and the butter then emulsifies into them.

“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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