Emulsified Sauces

Two sauces, warm hollandaise and cold mayonnaise, will serve all of high summer’s best seafood – crabs, lobsters, crawfish, langoustines, prawns – and much more besides. Both are luxuriously thick, suave emulsions – suspensions of tiny, closely packed fat droplets in water-based liquids – and have a reputation for being hard to make. Both are also the mother sauces for small families of delicious relatives. The knack of preparing them is worth acquiring.

Use pottery, glass or stainless steel mixing bowls for making all the sauces below, other metals may taint them.