Home › Sauces for Fish, Meat, Poultry and Game › Hollandaise Sauce
Hollandaise Sauce
½ cup butter
1 teaspoon salt
Yolks of 3 eggs
¼ teaspoon pepper
Juice of ½ lemon
½ 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 straightforward creamed-butter hollandaise, thickened at the last minute over hot water rather than whisked from melted butter. The method is forgiving in one way and unforgiving in another: the emulsion is built cold, but it can still break in the final minute of heating.
- The hinge: control the heatSet the bowl over hot water that is barely trembling, not at a rolling boil, and lift it off the moment the sauce coats the spoon like a thin custard. That point is roughly 160-170F; past about 180F the yolks scramble and the butter separates out.
- "Silver spoon"The instruction reflects a period belief that base metals discoloured egg yolks and lemon. Any non-reactive tool works now; a small whisk or silicone spatula does the job faster than a spoon.
- Butter temperature"Beat to a cream" means genuinely soft butter, around 65F, creamed until pale and fluffy. Cold butter will not take the yolks and the sauce will be granular from the start.
- SaltA full teaspoon for half a cup of butter is heavy by current taste, especially with salted butter. Start with a quarter teaspoon and correct at the end, after the lemon has gone in.
- Boiling waterThe half cup of boiling water is what makes this sauce light rather than rich; add it in a thin trickle while stirring constantly. Dumped in, it will cook the yolks on contact and the sauce will speckle.
- If it breaksPull the bowl off the heat immediately and whisk in a tablespoon of cold water, or start a fresh yolk in a clean bowl and beat the broken sauce into it a spoonful at a time.
- Yield and holdingAbout a cup and a quarter, enough for four to six portions of fish. Hollandaise will not reheat; hold it no more than twenty minutes in a warm (not hot) spot and stir before serving.
- EggsThe yolks here do reach a set temperature, but if serving anyone who should avoid lightly cooked egg, use pasteurized yolks.
Hollandaise reached English and American cookbooks in the nineteenth century, though the name simply means "Dutch" and its connection to the Netherlands is traditional rather than documented -- often explained by the country's reputation for butter. Butterick's version, published for readers of the company's dress patterns and magazines, is characteristic of American household books of the period: the classic technique of whisking yolks and butter over heat is replaced by a cold creaming that a cook can do well ahead, leaving only a few minutes of careful stirring before the dish goes to the table. The addition of boiling water, common in period recipes, stretches the butter and produces a lighter sauce than the restaurant version.