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Sauce a LA Hollandaise, or Dutch Sauce

A rich, emulsified sauce made from egg yolks, butter, lemon juice, and vinegar, served hot with fish or poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauce a LA Hollandaise, or Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Pick the parsley leaves very fine.

  2. Blanch the parsley in boiling water for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the parsley on a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks with a small spoon in a saucepan.

  2. Add 3 ounces of butter, elder vinegar, water, and salt to the egg yolks.

  3. Stir over moderate heat until it begins to boil.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more water.

  6. Mix the drained parsley into the hot butter sauce.

  7. Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with fish.

  2. Serve with boiled fowls or rabbits.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and set into a thick, smooth sauce when gently heated.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, forming the body of the sauce when emulsified with the yolks.
Elder vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.
Parsley
Adds fresh herbal aroma and colour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir over moderate heat until it begins to boil. Egg yolks thicken from gentle heat but scramble if overheated. Stirring constantly over moderate heat keeps the yolks smooth and lets the emulsion set into a sauce.

“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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