How To Make Hollandaise Sauce

Hollandaise sauce. Bowl of gourmet creamy Hollandaise sauce made with egg yolks, butter, lemon juice and vinegar blended together in a close up view
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When it comes to sauces, one of the basic French classics is the Hollandaise Sauce.  For many, Elizabeth David said it all when the purists would only except ‘nothing but butter, egg yolks and lemon juice’. It is essentially a sauce of warmed egg yolks flavoured with lemon juice into which butter is gradually incorporated to produce a thick, creamy pale yellow sauce.  Unfortunately hollandaise sauces lack inspiration if not flavour when poorly made using ingredients that are not up to scratch. Adding vinegar or a reduction of white wine makes a better flavoured sauce but then that becomes a Bearnaise sauce.

It acquired the Hollandaise name because in older times it was better known as Dutch sauce. There are early accounts going back to the late 1500s. It may be the case that the French Huguenots took the recipe with them to The Netherlands when they were exiled but there is no proof in that story although it sorts of makes some sense. Many chefs have devised variants of it but the basic recipe always remains the same.

The sauce is often poured over Eggs Benedict, asparagus, artichoke hearts, broccoli, fish such as poached sole, smoked salmon, all white fish, chicken and poached or mollet eggs. It also makes a superb accompaniment to fishcakes.  It is also a tasty topping for omelette Arnold Bennett where it is grilled with some grated cheese such as parmesan or gruyere.

Here we have a standard recipe for a simple Hollandaise sauce that comes a from a number of cookbooks but is worth repeating here because of its great versatility. It takes about a half hour to prepare.

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Equipment:

Ingredients for Hollandaise sauce:

  • 125 to 150g butter
  • 2 or 3 egg yolks
  • ½ tsp white wine vinegar or tarragon vinegar
  • lemon juice
  • cayenne pepper
  • salt and pepper is optional

Preparation:

  1. Melt all the  butter in a small saucepan and skim any white scum like solids from its surface. Keep this butter  warm and liquid. 
  2. Place the egg yolks, ½ tsp white wine or tarragon vinegar, a pinch of salt and a splash of ice-cold water in a metal or glass bowl that will fit over a small pan. I prefer a glass bowl so you can see whether there are any bits floating about.
  3. Lightly whisk (use a wire one) for a few minutes rather than ‘thrash’ to make sure all the ingredients come together.
  4. Place the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water (definitely not boiling) and whisk or stir reasonably vigorously and continuously until the sauce becomes both thicker and pale. It should take about 3-5 mins.
  5. Remove from the heat and slowly whisk in the melted butter, bit by bit until it’s all incorporated. The hollandaise should be creamy. If it thickens too much, add more water and mix in well. 
  6. Season with a squeeze of lemon juice and a little cayenne pepper. Keep warm until needed.
  7. If the sauce splits which it is apt to do at times, first place an egg yolk in another bowl. Add the disintegrated sauce a little at a time. Place it back over warm water and keep mixing but a little more carefully and with greater caution and care. If the water is too hot, the eggs simply get overly warm and scramble and that is not possible to recover.

Keeping The Sauce Warm

Hollandaise is always served warm but never hot. When it is kept too warm, the sauce just thins out and curdles. Chefs are able to keep it warm for about an hour over a very low heat or over a pan of warm or lukewarm water.

One approach suggested by Julia Childs is to keep the butter content to a minimum until it needs to be used. This is achieved by keeping the butter to a minimum and then beating in softened butter into the sauce before it is served.

Handling Turned Sauce

When a finished sauce separates add a tablespoon of cold water and beat this into it. It doesn’t always work!

A Sauce That Refuses To Thicken

One method that always works is to take a mixing bowl and rinse with hot water. Put a teaspoon of lemon juice and a tablespoon of the sauce. Beat for a moment with a wire whisk to make the sauce cream and starts to thicken. Beat in the rest of the sauce using a few spoons worth and keep beating until that portion thickens up. Keep adding the sauce, a spoon’s worth at a time until each addition has thickened. 

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