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Hollandaise Sauce
4 egg yolks cup butter teaspoonful salt 1 teaspoon pepper few grains cayenne ½ cup cold water 2 tablespoons lemon juice Put all ingredients, except the lemon juice, into a saucepan; set saucepan into a larger one of hot water. Beat constantly until mixture thickens, keeping water below the boiling point all the time. Add lemon juice and serve immediately.
Hollandaise Sauce No. 2 ½ cup butter 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon lemon juice 4 egg yolks 1 teaspoon paprika few grains cayenne one.
Cream butter; add lemon juice, yolks of eggs, one by When well blended add seasonings and cook over boiling water, just long enough to thoroughly heat the mixture. Should the mixture become overcooked, add two teaspoons cold water and beat vigorously.
Two versions of the same emulsion: the first built cold and cooked gently in a water bath, the second creamed like a butter sauce and only warmed through. Both stand or fall on temperature control.
- The hingeKeep the water in the lower pan below a simmer at all times. Yolks begin to set at roughly 150-160F; if the base pan boils the sauce is likely to curdle, and once it has fully scrambled beating rarely recovers it.
- Butter quantityThe butter measure in the first version has dropped out of the line. Version No. 2 uses ½ cup (1 stick, 4 oz) to four yolks, which is the sensible ratio for the first as well.
- Water bath, not double boilerA saucepan set inside a larger one of hot water gives gentler, more even heat than a tight-fitting double boiler. A stainless bowl over a wide pan of hot water works the same way and lets you whisk into the curve.
- The half cup of cold waterIn version one the water thins the yolks so they cook slowly and hold more butter. It also means the finished sauce is looser than a classic whisked-butter hollandaise; it will not sit up in a spoon.
- Rescuing a broken sauceThe two teaspoons of cold water and vigorous beating given at the end of version two is sound and applies to both. If it has gone grainy rather than merely thick, start a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and beat the broken sauce into it a spoonful at a time.
- Paprika and cayennePaprika here is for colour and mild sweetness, cayenne for heat. A teaspoon of paprika is generous by modern taste; start with half and adjust.
- Serving and holdingFour yolks make enough for six to eight servings over asparagus, poached eggs or fish. Hollandaise will not hold well: keep it barely warm in the covered pan off the heat for up to half an hour, and never reheat it directly.
- Yolks and heatThe yolks in version two are only warmed through, which may not bring them to a pasteurising temperature. Use very fresh eggs, or pasteurised yolks if serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg.
Hollandaise is one of the emulsified egg-and-butter sauces codified in nineteenth-century French kitchens, where it was listed among the mother sauces and gave rise to derivatives such as sauce mousseline; the name is, by folk tradition, attributed to a supposed Dutch character, though the sauce itself is French practice through and through. Lowney's Cook Book appeared in 1907, by which time the sauce was being served over asparagus and boiled fish. The two versions here are the diluted, gently cooked custard method, and the creamed-butter method that treats the sauce as a warmed compound butter rather than a true cooked emulsion.