Hollandaise is one of the five mother sauces, and a great topping on eggs benedict.  But there are many well known ways to slightly change hollandaise to create a different sauce.

Bavaroise- made with crayfish butter, cream and crayfish meat, common on fish

Bearnaise- Tarragon reduction, fresh tarragon and chevril, common on grilled meat

Choron- Bearnaise with tomato added, commonly served with meat and poultry

Foyot- Bearnaise with Demi-Glace, common on Meats and Offal (oragans)

Maltaise- Hollandaise with blood oranges, (some suggest adding orange zest also) commonly paired with asparagus

Mousseline- Hollandaise with heavy cream, common on fish and asparagus

Paloise- Hollandaise with mint reduction and fresh mint, common on grilled meats

Royal- Equal parts Veloute, hollandaise and whipped heavy cream, common with poached poultry and fish.

Baisc Hollandaise Recipe:

4 egg yolks
12 oz melted butter
2 Tbsp white wine vinigar
lemon juice
salt
peppercorns

1.  Reduce white wine vinigar with cracked peppercorns, by about 3/4 the volume.  Let cool
2.  Add egg yolks to the reduction, and whish over a double broiler.  Remove from heat if mixture is gettign to warm.  When egg yolks triple in volume stop whisking.
3.  Slowly add butter, if hte sauce starts to break add a small aplash of water to it.  If the sauce gets to thick add a splash of lemon juice. 
4.  Finish the sauce to taste with salt, pepper, or cayanne.  Or make another type of sauce form it.

When making Bearnaise, Choron, or Foyot sauce add the tarragon to the vinagar before making the sauce.  Add mint to the vinagar before making Paloise.

Bordelaise- Flavor with bone marrow, red wine, and shallots- commonly used with red meats, In New Orleans bordelaise is commonly made with garlic, parsley, shallots, olive oil and butter.  Escoffier suggests shallots, red wine and mignonette powder, with thyme and bayleaf reduced, then glace is added.  With a suggested finishing of lemon juice and bone marrow, dding but will make the sauce smoother but less clear.

Bourguignonne- Red wine, shallots, thyme, parsley, mushrooms, finished with butter and cayenne, common on beef, eggs on some dishes, more common with beef and egg noodles.  Means made in Burgundy, according to the Food Lover's Companion the sauce is made by braising meat in red wine with small mushrooms and onions
 




Deviled Sauce- Shallots and white wine, reduced, and glace and reduce more, add cayanne pepper.  Common with game fowl. Spicy sauce

Sauce Diable Escoffier- Finish deviled sauce with an equal part butter, Common with fish and grilled foods.
Spicy sauce


Financiere (called Perigueux in Escoffier)-Madiera and truffles, Common with beef.  Means Bankers style



Madiera- Glace, and Madiera wine


Mushroom- Mushrooms and butter, common with beef, veal and poultry

Piquante Sauce- Shallots, vinagar, white wine, reduced, add glace, skim, finish with capers, chopped gherkins (tiny cucumber commonly made into pickle), chevril, parsley, tarragon.  Serve with beef, tongue, and pork



Rouennaise- Prepare a Bordelaise Sauce, (Shallots, red wine, thyme, bayleaf, bone marrow) then add duck livers passed through a sieve to puree.  Do not let the sauce boil or cook for a long period of time.  Serve with duck.

While originally brown sauces were espagnole and demi-glace, now they have expanded to include jus lie, pan sauces, and brown stock reductions. 

To make espagnole you should make a brown veal stock, then add more roasted mirepoix, and aromatics (like a bouquet garni) and thicken it with a roux.  Demi-glace is a mixture of half espagnole and half brown stock that is reduced by half to create a thick.  Jus lies are brown sauce reductions thickened with a starch slurry.  Pan sauces are like gravy, made with the drippingsin the bottom of the pan. 

The most important step in making brown sauce is to create a high quality stock. 

Step 1:  Brown the Bones and mirepoix

Step 2:  Deglaze the pan and use the deglazing liquid in the pot to simmer the bones and mirepoix.

Step 3:  Simmer the stock.

Step 4:  Add Aromatics to stock, Skim, placing pot off center of the burner will help impurities coolect to one side of the pot. 

Step 5:  Strain stock, return to light simmer if needs to be reduced more.

Step 6:  Thicken sauce with desired thickening agent

Tips:  When storing sauce put plastic wrap on the surface of the sauce, this will prevent a thick film from forming on the top of the sauce. 

Many sauces can be created from this sauce.  Commom derivatives, flavor profiles, and common pairings of Brown Sauce to be posted soon on a seperate link. 

Hollandaise sauce is one of the five mother sauces in French cooking along with espagnole (brown sauce- like demi-glace), Veloute (made with white stock), Bechemel (cream sauce), and tomato.

While I was reading the 1998 James Beard Award winning cookbook Cookwise. While reading the section on emulsion sauces I stopped at the hollandaise recipe and reread three times. This recipe was slightly different then the way I was taught to make it. So I decided to look up the recipe for hollandaise sauce in other cookbooks that are highly trusted:
1. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Childs
2. The Joy of Cooking 75th anniversary, Rombauer
3. Sauces, James Peterson 1991 James Beard Award Cookbook of the Year
4 How to Cook Everything, Mark Bittman, 2009 James Beard Award General Cooking

Each book suggests a different ratio of egg yolks to butter. Sauces and the Joy of Cooking recommend using clarified butter (milk fats removed) and the other books recommend using all of the butter. Julia Childs recommends adding a Tablespoon of cold butter after heating the egg yolks so stop the yolks from continueing to cook. The Joy of Cooking also suggests adding a dash of hot sauce and cookwise says to add cayanne pepper. How to Cook does not recommend adding water to help stabelize the emulsion while whisking.

Whichever recipe you decide to look up and follow will still be delicious, especially if you use the freshest and highest quality ingredients. I'm looking forward to making Eggs Benedict in the morning and using a local hand made butter I found at a Trickle Springs Creamery, Chambersburg. (It looks like Julia Childs recipe has the most butter in her hollandaise recipe, I think I'll follow her recipe this time)