French · Main
Hollandaise
The warm emulsified mother — a stable, lemon-bright hollandaise built on a proper reduction, not just lemon juice; holds an hour if you respect 60 °C
- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 15 min
- Serves
- 6
Ingredients
- Egg yolks — 4 (80 g)
- White wine vinegar — 20 ml
- Water — 20 ml
- White peppercorns, crushed — 2 g
- Shallot, minced — 20 g
- Clarified butter, at 45–50 °C — 250 g
- Lemon juice — 20 ml
- Fine salt — 4 g
- Cayenne — 0.3 g
Method
- Reduce vinegar, water, shallot and peppercorns to 15 ml; strain and cool slightly.
- Whisk yolks with the reduction in a round-bottomed bowl over a bain-marie.
- Cook to the ribbon at 65 °C — the whisk leaves clear trails and the foam turns dense (about 4–5 min). Never stop whisking.
- Off the bain-marie, add clarified butter in a thin stream, whisking constantly.
- Season with lemon juice, salt and cayenne; adjust thickness with 10 ml warm water if needed.
- Hold at 55–60 °C (a warm bain-marie, off heat), whisking occasionally, up to 1 h.
- If it splits: whisk a teaspoon of warm water in a clean bowl and re-emulsify the sauce into it drop by drop.