Skip to main content
Main

Hollandaise, or Dutch Sauce

A sauce made with flour, butter, fish stock, salt, lemon juice or vinegar, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hollandaise, or Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the flour and butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the fish stock, salt, lemon juice or vinegar, and sugar.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Boil for about 5 minutes, then remove from heat.

Finish

  1. Thicken the sauce by whisking in the egg yolks.

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. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the liquid when cooked with butter into a starch base.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth fat that carries flavour.
Fish stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour of the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce as their proteins set gently with heat.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the richness.
Sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness to balance the acidity.

The step that matters

Whisking in the egg yolks. Egg yolk proteins set at low temperatures and can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from heat before whisking in the yolks, and whisking constantly, keeps the sauce smooth and thickened rather than lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, fish, sugar, 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.

More hollandaise sauce recipes

Mock 3 See all 212 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes