Home › Sauces for Fish, Meat, Poultry and Game › Hollandaise Sauce
Hollandaise Sauce
1/2 cup butter Yolks of 3 eggs Juice of 1/2 lemon 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1/2 cup boiling water This is one of the best sauces for fish. Beat the butter to a cream with a silver spoon, add the yolks of the eggs, one at a time, and beat well, then add the lemon-juice, salt and pepper. About five minutes before serving, add the boiling water, a little at a time, stirring well. Place the bowl in a saucepan of boiling water, and stir rapidly until the sauce thickens like boiled custard.
A classic warm emulsion built cold and finished over hot water, which is a more forgiving order of operations than the modern method of whisking yolks over heat from the start. The main adjustments are the salt and the temperature of the water bath.
- The hinge: gentle, indirect heatThe recipe sets the bowl directly in a saucepan of boiling water; safer practice is to set it over water that is barely bubbling. Yolks held much above about 180F will scramble and the sauce will break into curds and oil.
- "Thick as boiled custard"That is the finish point: the sauce coats the back of a spoon and holds a line when you draw a finger through it. It takes two to four minutes of steady stirring, and it thickens further off the heat, so pull it a shade early.
- SaltA full teaspoon is heavy for the quantity of sauce this makes. Start with a quarter teaspoon, taste at the end, and adjust.
- ButterCreaming works only if the butter is soft, around 65F, not melted. If it comes straight from the refrigerator, leave it out an hour first.
- The silver spoonSilver was commonly specified for acidic and egg mixtures, probably to avoid the discoloration associated with reactive metals. Any stainless, wooden, or silicone tool is fine now, and a small whisk gives a smoother emulsion.
- Boiling waterAdd it in a thin trickle with constant stirring. Poured in at once it will both split the emulsion and start cooking the yolks unevenly.
- Yield and holdingMakes roughly a cup and a quarter, enough for four to six servings of poached fish. Hold it no more than 20 minutes in a bowl over warm, not hot, water; it will not reheat once cooled.
- If it breaksStart a fresh yolk with a teaspoon of warm water in a clean bowl and whisk the broken sauce into it drop by drop.