No. 501

Modern Hollandaise Sauce

Sauce Hollandaise Moderne

Modern Hollandaise is made as follows: Melt two pounds of butter in a saucepan without heating it too much, then let it settle, and pour off the top. Beat twelve egg-yolks in a saucepan with half a pint of water. Set the saucepan on a slow fire, and stir the contents continuously with a whisk; and as soon as the eggs become consistent incorporate into them the butter previously melted, little by little, some salt and mignonette; or else a dash of cayenne instead of the mignonette, and besides this the juice of four lemons. If the sauce be too thick add a little water, and then pass it through a tammy (No. 159). Put the sauce in the mixing pot (Fig. 171); keep it in a bain-marie, not too hot, until needed.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's version is a professional batch sauce, built in quantity and held for service. The proportions are sound; the scale is not, unless you are feeding a banquet.

Yield and scalingTwo pounds of butter and twelve yolks make a very large batch, on the order of a quart and a half of sauce, enough for a banquet table. A sixth of the recipe works cleanly at home: about 5 oz butter, 2 yolks, 2 to 3 tablespoons water, the juice of half a lemon.
The hinge: heat controlThe yolks must thicken over gentle heat and never pass about 180F, or they scramble and the emulsion breaks. "A slow fire" means the lowest burner setting, or better, a bowl over barely steaming water with constant whisking.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked pepper, usually white. The name is traditionally connected with the mignonette plant, though the derivation is not documented. Cracked white peppercorns are the closest thing on a modern shelf; cayenne, as Ranhofer allows, is the usual substitute.
Clarified butter"Melt without heating it too much, let it settle, pour off the top" is clarification: skim the foam, then use the clear yellow fat and leave the milky residue behind. Clarified butter emulsifies more readily and holds without weeping.
Half a pint of waterOne cup in the full batch, which is a great deal of liquid with the yolks; it is there to buffer the eggs against the heat and much of it cooks off as you whisk. Reduce it proportionally when scaling, and hold some back to thin the finished sauce.
TammyA tammy (No. 159) is a fine worsted or linen cloth through which sauce is wrung to make it perfectly smooth. A fine-mesh conical strainer does the same job with less mess.
Holding the sauceA bain-marie 'not too hot' is usually taken to mean somewhere in the region of 130 to 140F: cooler and the sauce stiffens as the butter firms, hotter and the eggs continue to cook and the sauce will eventually split. Do not hold hollandaise for more than an hour or two.
If it breaksWhisk a spoonful of the broken sauce into a teaspoon of warm water in a clean bowl, then dribble the rest back in. A fresh yolk beaten with a little water serves as a base if the split is severe.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's kitchen, and his catalogue of hot sauces runs to hundreds of numbered entries in the French manner. He calls this one "moderne," a label often read as distinguishing it from older hollandaise, which was sometimes built on a velouté or a flour-thickened base rather than on yolks and butter alone, though the recipe itself gives no such explanation; the version here, an emulsion set by egg and enriched with clarified butter, is essentially the sauce still taught today. The name is generally traced to Dutch butter, long the standard of quality in French kitchens, though the association is traditional rather than documented. The scale of the recipe — two pounds of butter, a dozen yolks — is a reminder that these were working instructions for a brigade, not household cookery.