Hollandaise is one of the mother sauces It is egg yolks and clarified butter, which is butter that has been boiled, usually finished with lemon. All of the mother sauces are fairly simple and require minimal ingredients.

You use the mother sauce as a base. For instance, bechamel is the base for sausage gravy and Alfredo,

The trick to hollandaise is not to cook the egg yolks! whisk the egg yolks over a double broiler and add the warm butter in a stream. Keep whisking and create an emulsion between the two. If it is too hot you have scrambled eggs. Hollandaise is really 2 maybe 3 ingredients. Don’t buy the package stuff, egg yolks butter and practice is all you need.