SC - hollandaise sauce

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Mark Harris wrote:

> Ok, question time. This is Stefan, after all.
> 
> What is Hollandaise sauce? I know it is some kind of fancy sauce but
> what is in it? What makes it special? Is it period? Where is it from,
> Holland?

Sauce Hollandaise, as we now know it, is the modern descendant of
earlier forms of a sauce believed to have been brought to France by the
Heugenots. So, its prototype appears to have actually been a Flemish or
Dutch sauce thickened with eggs, like a savory custard, and perhaps a
little butter beaten in to smooth the texture. I'm not up on the finer
details of Heugenot history, but that would put the prototype sauce at,
what, late sixteenth, early seventeenth century?

Francois  Pierre de La Varenne, in "Le Cuisinier Francois" (1651) gives
a recipe for a similar sauce, calling for "good fresh butter, a little
vinegar, salt, nutmeg, and an egg yolk to bind the sauce; take care that
it does not curdle." We have no ingredient measurements or proportions,
though, let alone any additional  method or instructions, so it's hard
to say how close to Hollandaise this is. There are a number of examples
of contemporary French and English sauces made by beating soft or melted
butter into things like vinegar, and there seems to have been an equally
prevalent tradition in Germanic countries of thickening sauces with egg
yolks.  

Modern Hollandaise sauce is usually made by warming egg yolks in a bowl,
over a pan of hot water, and whipping them until light with vinegar,
lemon juice, salt, white and/or cayenne pepper. You then beat in melted
or clarified butter, a tiny bit at a time, as you might with mayonnaise,
until it is light yellow in color, thick, and the sharpness of the lemon
and the vinegar is a bit more subdued. More daring cooks will often omit
the bain marie / double boiler aspect, and do it right in a saucepan
over direct heat. Of course, then it is more likely to curdle and
de-emulsify or break.

Emulsified sauces in general appear to be rare in medieval cookery. I
believe there's one calling for hard-boiled egg yolks, mashed with the
other ingredients, and olive oil beaten in (kind of an early mayonnaise
or tartar sauce), in one of the Spanish or Catalonian sources. Not sure
which offhand.

I'd have to say my feeling is that Hollandaise sauce as we know it today
is OOP, but that there might be recognizable ancestors from within
period.

Adamantius    
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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