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Dutch Sauce for Fish
Half a teaspoonful of flour, two ounces of butter, two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, same of water, yolks of two eggs, salt to taste. Put all on together, keep stirring until it thickens, don't let it boil or it will curdle. Good for salads made of hard-boiled egg or cold fish.
This is hollandaise under its older English name, stabilised with a pinch of flour and made with vinegar rather than a reduction. It is a very small quantity and comes together in a few minutes.
- Weights and volumesTwo ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons, half a stick. The whole recipe yields something over half a cup, enough for two to four portions of fish; double it if you want sauce to spare.
- The hinge: heat controlEgg yolks set between about 150 and 175F, and the sauce thickens well before boiling. Use a heatproof bowl over barely simmering water, or the smallest saucepan over the lowest flame, and lift it off the heat the moment it coats the spoon.
- Why the flour is thereThat half teaspoon of flour is insurance. Starch granules interfere with the egg proteins bonding too tightly, so the sauce tolerates more heat than a classic flour-free hollandaise. Whisk it into the cold vinegar and water first so it does not lump.
- "Put all on together"Unusual for an emulsion sauce, but it works here: cold butter, cold liquid and yolks all in the pan, warmed slowly while stirring. The butter melts as the yolks thicken, which keeps the temperature down. Cut the butter into small pieces to help this along.
- VinegarThe recipe does not say which vinegar. Two tablespoons in this quantity is assertive; white wine vinegar or a mix of vinegar and lemon juice reads better to modern palates.
- If it splitsPull it off the heat immediately, drop in an ice cube or a spoonful of cold water and whisk hard. If that fails, whisk the broken sauce a little at a time into a fresh yolk in a clean bowl.
- Serving and holdingServe within the half hour, kept barely warm; it will not survive reheating and should not be refrigerated and revived. For the cold uses the book suggests, with hard-boiled egg or cold fish, let it cool to room temperature rather than chilling it hard.
"Dutch sauce" is the name English cookery books commonly used for hollandaise through much of the nineteenth century, and the two names sat side by side in print for decades before the French form won out. The connection to Holland is traditional rather than documented; it is usually explained by the Low Countries' reputation as a source of fine butter, though the sauce itself belongs to the French repertoire of warm egg-and-butter emulsions. The small quantity of flour is a stabiliser, and the recipe pairs it with an explicit warning about curdling.