hollandaise

French hollandaise means 'in the Dutch manner' or 'from Holland.' The sauce — an emulsion of egg yolks, melted butter, and lemon juice — was probably developed in France, not the Netherlands. The name may refer to the use of Dutch butter, which was widely traded in seventeenth-century Europe, or it may simply be a geographic label to distinguish this butter-heavy sauce from others. The Dutch themselves do not claim the sauce.

The earliest similar recipe appears in La Varenne's Le Cuisinier François (1651), though it was not called hollandaise. The name attached to the sauce by the early nineteenth century. Escoffier classified hollandaise as one of the five mother sauces, alongside béchamel, velouté, espagnole, and tomato. Of the five, hollandaise is the most difficult — the emulsion can break at any moment if the temperature is wrong or the whisking stops.

Eggs Benedict — poached eggs, Canadian bacon, hollandaise sauce on an English muffin — made hollandaise famous in American breakfast culture. The dish appeared at Delmonico's restaurant in New York around 1860 (the exact date and inventor are disputed). Eggs Benedict became the most popular brunch dish in America, and hollandaise became the sauce most home cooks attempt and fail at. The split sauce — when the emulsion breaks into greasy curds — is a common kitchen disaster.

Blenders changed hollandaise in the 1960s. Julia Child demonstrated a blender hollandaise that reduced the whisking anxiety. Modern restaurant kitchens often use immersion blenders or hold hollandaise in thermal circulators. The technique has been simplified by technology. The name — crediting Holland for a French sauce — remains delightfully wrong.