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Sauce Hollandaise

A buttery sauce thickened with flour and egg yolks, flavored with lemon or vinegar.

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 sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon.

  2. Sprinkle the flour over the melted butter, stirring continuously.

  3. Gradually pour in the warm water while stirring until the sauce thickens.

  4. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and lemon juice or vinegar together.

  5. Slowly pour the egg mixture into the sauce, stirring constantly.

  6. Let the sauce thicken without boiling, or it will curdle.

Serve

  1. Serve over fish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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

Butter
Provides fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a stable base that holds the emulsion.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter into the sauce and set to a creamy, thickened texture when gently heated.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture and keeping the heat gentle. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so if the sauce gets too hot or boils after the eggs go in, the proteins tighten and the sauce curdles instead of staying smooth and creamy. Stir constantly and add the egg mixture slowly.

“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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