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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, egg yolks, lemon juice, water, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and fry gently without browning for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the water and bring to a boil.

  4. Boil for four to five minutes, then remove from heat.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in the egg yolks one by one.

  2. Place over gentle heat or in a pan of boiling water, stirring until the sauce thickens; do not let it boil.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Just before serving, add the lemon juice or a little tarragon vinegar.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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
Thicken the sauce and add richness and emulsifying body as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smooth flavour in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with liquid once it is cooked with the butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening over gentle heat. Egg yolks set at low temperatures and curdle if overheated, so the sauce must thicken gently without boiling. Adding yolks to a hot base slowly, while stirring, helps keep them smooth.

“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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