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Sauce

Sauce Hollandaise

A creamy sauce made from butter, flour, water or stock, egg yolks, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan until it bubbles.

  2. Whisk in the flour and cook until well combined.

  3. Gradually stir in the boiling water or stock until it boils.

Finish the sauce

  1. Remove from heat and slowly stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Return to heat briefly to set the eggs without boiling.

  3. Remove from heat again and stir in lemon juice and small pieces of butter. Whisk until well combined.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter and set gently to give the sauce its rich, thick body.
Butter
Provides fat that carries flavour and, emulsified with the yolks, gives a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the base as it cooks with the butter and liquid, giving the sauce body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg flavour.

The step that matters

Return to heat briefly without boiling. Egg yolks thicken from gentle heat, but if the sauce gets too hot they scramble and the emulsion can split. Keep the heat low and stir constantly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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