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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

A creamy sauce made from butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, onion juice, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,037 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the drawn butter from the heat.

  2. Gradually add the beaten egg yolks, stirring constantly.

  3. Mix in the lemon juice, onion juice, and chopped parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Drawn butter
Provides fat and richness, giving the sauce its smooth, silky body.
Egg yolks
Their lecithin and proteins emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce as they set gently.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks gradually. Egg yolk proteins can scramble if they get too hot or are added too fast. Adding them slowly while stirring lets the yolks emulsify with the butter into a smooth sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, lemon, parsley):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Leekbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, lemon, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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