Emulsions & Pan Sauces · Sauce

Hollandaise, and the Two Ways It Splits

Advanced
20 min
roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Vegetarian

rich · gently hot · bright Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a warm current of chile, with a clean, bright snap.

Ingredients

3 egg yolks, about 54 g
200 g clarified butter, warm at 50C (122F)
30 ml water, plus 15 ml held back to slacken
10 ml lemon juice
3 g fine salt
0.2 g cayenne
1 g white pepper, ground

The skills inside

Hollandaise Deglazing & pan sauces Building an emulsion The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil

The words inside

Emulsions Stainless Clad (Tri-Ply)

Allergen screen

Found: dairy · egg

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Set a stainless bowl over a pan of water held at 70C (158F), a bare shiver with no bubbles breaking the surface, and check that the bowl base sits clear of the water.
Whisk the yolks with 30 ml water off the heat until frothy, then set the bowl over the bath and whisk steadily until the sabayon triples in volume, holds a ribbon on the surface for two seconds and reads 65C (149F).
Lift the bowl off the heat and add the clarified butter in a thread no thicker than a pencil lead for the first 50 g, whisking until each addition disappears and the sauce climbs the wires.
Pour the rest faster once the emulsion is set, stopping to slacken with the held 15 ml of water whenever the sauce stiffens to mayonnaise thickness instead of falling off the whisk in a ribbon.
Season with lemon, salt, cayenne and white pepper, then hold covered at 55C (131F) and no hotter; a metal pan left on a warm hob will take it past 70C (158F) unnoticed.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Building an emulsion 40 recipes

It visibly thickens as the fat goes in, heavier and more opaque than either part was alone, which is the emulsion announcing itself.
At no point is there a pool of free fat sitting ahead of the work: fat went in no faster than it disappeared into the body.
Glossy and homogeneous, with no slick floating on top and no visible droplets standing apart in it.
It clings: coating what it is put on and holding a line, rather than running off and splitting into a puddle at the plate’s edge.
It survives standing: minutes later there is no ring of weeping liquid underneath and no film of fat breaking out on the surface.

Where it goes wrong The fat went in faster than the shear could break it up, or the temperature drifted out of the range the method needs: it breaks into grease over a thin liquid, and whisking the broken thing harder does nothing. The rescue is a fresh base, with the broken sauce worked into it slowly, as if it were the fat.

Deglazing & pan sauces 49 recipes

The pan still holds its fond. Nothing has been rinsed, wiped, or soaked, and the browned layer is intact on the floor.
Excess fat was poured off first and the browned layer left behind; the fat is not the flavour and a sauce carrying all of it will not come together.
The liquid went into a still-hot pan and the floor came clean: scraped while it bubbles, the base goes from stuck brown to bare metal and the sauce darkens as it takes it up.
The fond was brown and not black. A burnt floor dissolves into bitterness that cannot be seasoned out, and is better washed away than deglazed.
Reduced first and seasoned afterwards, tasted at the consistency it will be served at rather than at the start.

Where it goes wrong The pan was left to stand and go cold before anybody came back to it. Cold fond will not dissolve, so the scraping lifts nothing, and the sauce arrives thin and pale with the flavour it was supposed to carry still welded to the metal.

At the Table

The Pour: Grüner Veltliner
Also Right: Vermentino or dry Chenin
From the Taps: Saison
Zero-Proof: Sparkling water with citrus & herbs

The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.

Family notes

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Hollandaise, and the Two Ways It Splits Technique: HollandaiseThe skill inside this recipe Technique: Deglazing & pan saucesThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Emulsions & Pan Sauces kitchen