MirepoixYolks, butter and acid held together by heat and nerve. The one mother sauce with no flour in it, and the one that can break in front of you.
| Time | |
|---|---|
| Servings | 4 |
| Difficulty | Hard |
| Equipment | Small saucepan, heatproof bowl, balloon whisk, thermometer |
Contains raw egg — not for pregnancy, young children or anyone immunocompromised.
- 3 pc — egg yolk
- 180 g — clarified butter
- 30 ml — white wine vinegar
- 30 ml — water
- 1 pinch — cracked black pepper
- 3 g — salt
- 5 ml — lemon juice
3 yolks : 180 g butter
- Boil the vinegar with the cracked pepper until three-quarters of it has gone. Take it off the heat and let it cool to lukewarm — yolks added to hot vinegar scramble on contact.
- Add the water and the yolks and set the bowl over a pan of water that is steaming, not boiling. Whisk without stopping. In three or four minutes the yolks thicken to the consistency of cream and the whisk starts leaving tracks.
- Take the bowl off the heat and pour in the warm butter in the thinnest stream you can manage, whisking the whole time. The first third decides everything; after that it accepts butter easily.
- Finish with lemon juice and salt. Keep it between 50 and 55 °C — hotter and it curdles, colder and it sets. If it splits, whisk a spoonful of hot water into a clean bowl and rebuild the sauce into it, a spoonful at a time.
Asparagus, poached eggs, plainly cooked fish. Swap the vinegar reduction for a tarragon one and it is Béarnaise; fold in whipped cream and it is Mousseline.
Sauces in this library built on Hollandaise
- Béarnaise: + shallot, tarragon, dry white wine · − water, lemon juice
- Choron: + tomato purée, tarragon · − water, cracked black pepper, salt, lemon juice
- Maltaise: + blood orange juice · − white wine vinegar, cracked black pepper, lemon juice
- Mousseline: + double cream · − white wine vinegar, water, cracked black pepper
- Noisette: + butter · − clarified butter, white wine vinegar, cracked black pepper
- One serving (1 of 4): clarified butter 45 g, white wine vinegar 7.5 ml, water 7.5 ml, salt 0.75 g, lemon juice 1.25 ml
- Double batch (8 servings): egg yolk 6 pc, clarified butter 360 g, white wine vinegar 60 ml, water 60 ml, salt 6 g, lemon juice 10 ml
In the same library
- Allemande — 40 min · Medium
- White wine sauce — 30 min · Medium
- Chocolate mousse — 30 min · Medium
- Eggs with hollandaise — 30 min · Medium
- Why an emulsion breaks — 8 min · Medium
- Monter au beurre: gloss without thickening — 3 min · Easy
Source · Mirepoix · Auguste Escoffier, Le Guide Culinaire (1907), no. 30