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Soup

Hollandaise Soup

A creamy soup made with Hollandaise sauce, peas, carrot, cucumber, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hollandaise Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cook the peas, carrot, and cucumber in separate pans of boiling salted water.

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a pot, add the flour, and mix well.

  2. Gradually add the white stock and bring to a boil.

  3. Cool the mixture slightly.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, cream, and milk together.

  2. Strain the mixture into the soup and cook gently without boiling until the yolks thicken.

  3. Add the cooked garnish and serve.

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. Peas + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Carrot + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup as they set gently with heat, giving a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Combined with butter to form a roux that thickens the stock.
Butter
Provides fat for the roux and adds richness to the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the texture of the soup.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture into the soup and cook gently without boiling. Egg yolks thicken at low heat but curdle and turn grainy if they boil. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring helps the soup stay smooth.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, cream, milk, peas, cucumber):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, cream, milk, peas, cucumber. 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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