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Hollandaise Sauce
4 egg yolks 2 tablespoonfuls vinegar 4 ozs. (4 heaping tablespoonfuls) sweet 1 tablespoonful cold water Salt to taste butter Break the eggs into a fireproof dish, beat them up, then stir in the water and the vinegar.
Mix carefully over the fire till it thickens, and be careful that it does not curdle. Stir in the butter and add the salt.
A compact, old-style hollandaise built on vinegar rather than lemon, cooked directly in the pan rather than over water. The whole recipe turns on heat control.
- The hinge: gentle, constant heatYolks set between about 150F and 165F, and hollandaise breaks above roughly 180F. Work over the lowest possible flame, or set the dish over barely simmering water, and stir without stopping. Lift it off the heat every few seconds if it feels like it is racing.
- "Fireproof dish"Presumably a flameproof earthenware or enamelled casserole that can sit directly on the burner. A heavy stainless saucepan or a bowl over simmering water does the same job; avoid untreated aluminium, which can grey the sauce when acid is present.
- "Sweet butter"Unsalted butter. Four ounces is one standard American stick, or 115 g. Cut it into small pieces and add them a few at a time off the direct heat so the emulsion has a chance to take.
- Salt at the endThe salt goes in after the butter; with unsalted butter and no reduction, the seasoning point is easier to judge once the sauce is complete.
- Vinegar, not lemonTwo tablespoons of vinegar to four yolks is sharp by modern taste. A mild white wine vinegar suits it; distilled malt or cider vinegar will dominate. Many cooks now substitute lemon juice, which gives a rounder sauce.
- If it curdlesPull it off the heat at the first sign of graininess, drop in an ice cube or a spoonful of cold water, and whisk hard. If that fails, start a fresh yolk with a teaspoon of water in a clean pan and beat the broken sauce into it a little at a time.
- Yield and holdingAbout one cup, enough for four to six servings over fish, asparagus or eggs. Hollandaise will not reheat; hold it barely warm, near but not on the stove, and use it within the hour.
- Egg safetyThe yolks here are cooked, but only just. If serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized yolks and confirm the sauce reaches 160F on an instant-read thermometer.
Hollandaise carries its name from the Dutch, and the usual explanation is that the French called any butter-rich sauce "à la hollandaise" because the Netherlands were long a byword for good butter; the attribution is traditional rather than documented. Early nineteenth-century French versions were often thickened with flour as well as yolks, and it is only over the course of the nineteenth century that the sauce settles into the pure emulsion of yolk, acid and butter recorded here. This version uses vinegar rather than lemon. The word "casserole" is itself a reminder of what it once meant: not a baked dish but the vessel itself.