Hollandaise

Yolks, 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.

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.