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Hollandaise-Bien Sauce
Place in an enamelled saucepan one teaspoon freshly crushed whole white pepper, one sound shallot, one small branch each fresh parsley and chervil and the rind of a quarter sound lemon. Pour in three-quarters gill good vinegar, let slowly reduce on fire to one-fourth the quantity, strain through cheesecloth into a bowl, add two fresh egg yolks and sharply whisk for a minute. Place in a saucepan containing boiling water up to half the height of bowl, and briskly whisk yolks for three minutes. Pour in drop by drop a half gill hot clarified butter, sharply whisking while adding, also drop by drop three tablespoons thick cream, whisking briskly meanwhile. Season with two saltspoons salt, half saltspoon cayenne, mix well, strain sauce through cheesecloth into a sauce bowl and serve.
A classic reduction-based hollandaise, closer to what most cooks now call bearnaise in method. The whole thing lives or dies on temperature control over the water bath.
- The hinge: gentle heatThe recipe sets the bowl into a saucepan of boiling water that comes only halfway up the bowl's sides, so the yolks are warmed indirectly. Egg yolks begin to set and curdle somewhere around 160-170F, so pull the bowl off the heat the moment the mixture thickens and ribbons off the whisk, and return it briefly as needed.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is 4 fl oz, so three-quarters gill of vinegar is 6 tablespoons, reduced to about 1 1/2 tablespoons. Half a gill of clarified butter is 4 tablespoons (2 oz). A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, making two saltspoons 1/2 teaspoon salt and half a saltspoon a scant 1/8 teaspoon cayenne.
- Enamelled saucepanThe instruction is about acid, not nostalgia. Reduce the vinegar in stainless, enamel or glass; bare aluminium or unlined copper will give the sauce a metallic edge and dull grey color.
- Clarified butterMelt unsalted butter gently, skim the foam, and pour off the golden fat leaving the milky solids behind. It should be warm, not sizzling, or it will cook the yolks as it goes in.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh; a little tarragon plus extra parsley is the usual stand-in and takes the sauce toward bearnaise. Dried chervil contributes almost nothing.
- Drop by dropOnly the first tablespoon or so of butter needs true drop-by-drop patience. Once the emulsion has taken, a thin steady stream is safe, and the cream can go in more freely at the end.
- If it breaksWhisk a fresh yolk with a teaspoon of warm water in a clean bowl and beat the broken sauce into it a spoonful at a time. A splash of cold water whisked hard will sometimes rescue a sauce that has only just begun to separate.
- Yield and servingRoughly 2/3 cup, enough for four as a sauce for poached fish, asparagus or eggs. It will not reheat; hold it barely warm in a warm bowl and serve promptly.
Hollandaise carries a Dutch name that has never been satisfactorily explained; it is generally traced to French kitchens describing a butter-and-egg sauce in the supposed Dutch manner. Escoffier's Guide Culinaire (1903) set it among the small group of foundation sauces of the professional repertoire. The version here is a restaurant-kitchen treatment rather than a plain domestic one: instead of lemon juice alone it begins with a vinegar reduction infused with shallot, white pepper, parsley, chervil and lemon rind, and strains twice -- once after the reduction, once at the finish -- which is the same architecture as bearnaise and produces a sharper, more aromatic sauce. Named variants of this kind are common in hotel and professional cookbooks of the period, which carried long lists of derivative sauces.