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Hollandaise Sauce
1 cup butter 2 beaten egg yolks 1 tablespoon lemon juice salt cayenne 1/2 cup boiling water Cream butter; add gradually egg yolks; stir well; add lemon juice, salt and cayenne; add boiling water. Stir over boiling water till thick as boiled custard. Serve immediately.
A creamed-butter hollandaise rather than the classic emulsion of melted butter beaten into warm yolks. The method is more forgiving than it looks, but the heat has to stay low and the sauce has to leave the stove the moment it thickens.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe bowl sits over boiling water, but the sauce itself must not simmer. Above roughly 180F the yolks scramble and the emulsion breaks. Pull it off the heat while it is still moving freely and stir off-heat for a few seconds to coast to the finish.
- "Thick as boiled custard"That means it coats the back of a spoon and holds a brief line when you draw a finger through it — around 165-170F. It will not be as stiff as a modern restaurant hollandaise, and it is not meant to be.
- 1 cup butterTwo sticks, 8 oz, softened to room temperature so it creams without melting. Unsalted is the sensible choice here since salt is added separately; if you use salted butter, hold back on the added salt.
- Butter-to-yolk ratioTwo yolks to a cup of butter is generous butter by modern standards, and the half cup of boiling water is what carries it. Expect a loose, pourable sauce. Three yolks gives a body closer to what most cooks now expect.
- Add the boiling water slowlyDribble it in while stirring, as with any hot liquid going into eggs. Dumped in at once it risks cooking the yolks in streaks before the sauce ever reaches the stove.
- CayenneA pinch, well under 1/8 teaspoon for this volume. Cayenne is the usual seasoning in American hollandaise recipes of this period, where French versions more often call for pepper; it should register as warmth, not heat.
- Yield and holdingAbout 1 1/2 cups, enough for six to eight servings over asparagus, salmon or poached eggs. "Serve immediately" is not politeness — held over heat it breaks, and chilled it sets solid. If you must wait, keep it in a warm (not hot) water bath for no more than 20 minutes.
- If it breaksWhisk a spoonful of the broken sauce into a fresh yolk or a tablespoon of hot water in a clean bowl, then work the rest in gradually. Recoverable more often than not.
Hollandaise means simply "Dutch sauce," a name traditionally traced to the older European habit of labelling rich butter-and-egg preparations after Holland, the butter-exporting country, though that derivation is folk tradition rather than documented fact; the sauce was codified in French kitchens, and Escoffier's Guide Culinaire (1903) lists it among the mother sauces. The creamed-butter method here, rather than the classic drizzle of melted butter into warm yolks, was common in American books of the period — it demanded less of the cook's wrist and less of her nerve.