A very delicious Hollandaise sauce
Mother sauces with Chef Escoffier
Welcome back to my Home Culinary School series: the Escoffier way.
I’ve always wanted to go to culinary school, so instead of waiting for the perfect time, and in a moment of madness, I decided to let Escoffier guide me through his extensive text, Le Guide Culinaire. Ever since the start of the year, I've been intermittently sharing the many highs and lows of my culinary adventures in part-diary, part-recipe format. Catch up here.
Today I'm sharing a delightfully simple recipe for hollandaise sauce with a great technique. If you are just joining the journey now, my inspiration for this series, Auguste Escoffier, is renowned for creating the five mother sauces (as well as a whole system/blueprint that most professional kitchens still use today). So far, we’ve covered Tomato Sauce, Béchamel, Velouté, and chicken stock (not a mother sauce but a base for a variety of sauces.) We still have two other mother sauces to undertake: Espagnole and Hollandaise. So, without further ado, let’s get started!
Lesson #?!
4.51pm Monday
Coffee units: 1
Negative thoughts: 2
Positive thoughts 13
As you may know, I am now a business owner! A few weeks ago, I launched A Good Table Studio and despite the newly hectic pace of life, I couldn't abandon this project. Reading Le Guide Culinaire has been, and continues to be, a fascinating and invaluable source of recipe inspiration and education. In this age of countless online recipes, quality can often be lost. With so many ideas continually flooding our screens, it can be a real challenge to discern what truly works.
Unlike modern blogs and some cookbooks, Le Guide Culinaire, with its concise, tried and tested instructions, offers no hand-holding. This is because Escoffier was writing for cooks and chefs already employed in restaurant kitchens. The lack of instruction has been frustrating at times, but it has also encouraged me to lean towards deeper research into processes that are unfamiliar. This discipline of learning essential techniques through trial and error has, in turn, reduced a sense of either passive acceptance or deep frustration when it comes to less than perfect results. In other words, I am honing my instincts through repetition. Sometimes the only way to know if a recipe is working is to taste, adjust, taste and adjust! What I’m ultimately discovering is that, if you learn classic techniques, embrace supposed failure and learn to trust the process, eventually you won’t need to rely on a recipe.
Speaking of recipes, let’s make some Hollandaise sauce, but first, let me grab another cheeky coffee.
5.05pm
Coffee in hand. Right, back to it. While Hollandaise is often associated with the classic breakfast dish Eggs Benedict, it actually serves as the foundation for numerous other sauces. For me, nothing beats a perfectly seasoned medium-rare steak topped with Béarnaise sauce. Béarnaise is simply Hollandaise enhanced with shallots, tarragon, and sometimes a little cracked black pepper.
I currently have an abundance of eggs from baking projects, so I’ve decided I’m going to make a classic eggs Benedict with smoked salmon on a freshly baked English muffin. Let’s get cooking.
Sauce Hollandaise
This sauce is to be found in the Small Compound White Sauces section of Le Guide Culinaire. Escoffier’s ingredients include: 500g melted butter, 5 egg yolks, approx. 4-6 tbs water, 2 tbs vinegar, salt, pepper and a few drops of lemon juice. Although this sauce can be kept in the refrigerator in an airtight container for between 2-4 days, even so, I decided to half the quantities to avoid waste (and also Hollandaise does not re-heat very well.) This decision, in turn, resulted in the need for a little adaption, as you will see.
A note on the method
Some recipes recommend adding cold knobs of butter to the egg yolks. However, I’ve found that this method can increase the chances of the sauce splitting. I much prefer Escoffier’s method of very gradually adding melted butter to the egg yolks and slightly warm vinegar reduction. Speaking of the butter, many recipes recommend using clarified butter, but I’ve found there is virtually no difference between using clarified and non-clarified butter to the final result.
Ingredients
250g butter (melted)
3 egg yolks
2-4 tbsps water
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
A little lemon juice
Ground pepper
Salt
Method
Place 2 tbsp water and 1 tbsp white wine vinegar in a small/medium pan together with a pinch each of ground pepper and salt. Reduce the liquid by two-thirds and remove from the stove.
Obviously this will leave hardly any fluid, but don’t worry, Escoffier insists that ‘it is essential that a reduction is made’ because it’s the caramelized flavor that is important.
(Now place a medium heatproof bowl over a slightly larger pot of just simmering water, thus creating a Bain-marie, which will ensure that you don’t overcook the eggs. Do make sure, however, that the bowl doesn’t touch the water.)
Place the reduction into the bowl, add 1 tbsp of room temp water and 3 egg yolks to the reduction. Whisking continuously over low heat, add a few drops of melted butter to establish emulsification, followed by a thin, steady stream of the remaining butter. Add a drop or two of room temp water during the process to ensure lightness.
Escoffier states that cooking the eggs in this way ensures the ‘cohesion and emulsification of the sauce’.
Adjust seasoning with salt and a few drops of lemon juice.
Pass the sauce through a fine strainer and serve immediately.
That's a wrap for this week, friends. As always, thank you for reading. I'd love to hear from you, so feel free to comment below if you plan on making this recipe.
Love, Sarah x
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This is definitely (for me) an all-purpose sauce!
An enjoyable read even though I prefer my food dry!