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Sauce

Hollandaise Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add the water and lemon juice to the yolks.

  3. Transfer the mixture to an enamelled pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Stir over gentle heat until thickened, ensuring it does not boil to prevent curdling.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together85,593 recipes

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

Egg and lemon share little aroma chemistry, yet 44,316 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
Emulsify with butter and thicken into a smooth, rich sauce when gently heated.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the sauce and helps form a smooth emulsion with the yolks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter and yolks.

The step that matters

Stir over gentle heat without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat, but too much heat scrambles them and causes curdling. Gentle, steady heat keeps the sauce smooth and emulsified.

“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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