Maltaise sauce is a classical French sauce and a derivate sauce from Hollandaise. The ingredient that defines Maltaise apart from Hollandaise is a blood orange. Yes, that sweet and bitter orange, with a taste between sweet orange and grapefruit, and aroma close to raspberry.
Maltaise sauce is a perfect sauce to be served with many vegetables, especially asparagus.
It is also worth noting, that Maltaise sauce has the same expiry time, as the Hollandaise sauce (check my notes on the technique of cooking a Hollandaise sauce HERE), i.e. 2 hours at 63C (145F). If the temperature rises above that level, eggs will start to cook, and if the temperature falls below this level, butter will start to solidify. Either way, there would be no turning back after that happens and the sauce will be ruined. That’s why it’s very important to keep the sauce warm at the right temperature.
Here’s the recipe of a Maltaise sauce
Preparation time: 5 min
Cooking time: 20 min
Per servings: 2
Ingredients:
- 25 g White wine vinegar
- 35 g Water
- 4 White peppercorns
- 5 g Shallots (brunoise cut)
- 5 ea Bay leaves
- 1 Yolk (of a large fresh, pasteurized egg)
- 85 g Clarified butter (product of app. 110 g of Butter)
- Salt (to taste)
- 5 g Lemon juice (fresh)
- 10-15 g of Blood Orange juice
- A pinch of orange skin rasp
Equipment & tools:
- Double-boiler
- Small sauce pot
- Small sieve
- Knife
- Whisk
- Rasp
Directions:
- Place vinegar, water, peppercorns, bay leaves and shallots into a small sauce pot and simmer the mixture on low heat for about 10-15 min, until the mixture get infused and reduced twice in size. Strain and discard all the flavourings (peppercorns, bay leaves and shallots).
- Set up a double boiler over a pot with boiling hot water. However, switch off the heat completely.
- Pour our vinegary liquid (from Step 1) and an egg yolk into a double boiler and start vigorously mixing with a whisk, until fluffy consistency. Here, it’s very important for the vinegary liquid to be just warm and not hot, in order to avoid the coagulation of an egg.
- Start adding clarified butter, drop by drop. It also must be just warm and not hot. If you add too much butter at a time, the sauce will split, so add it very slowly.
- Once you add all the butter, sauce will reach ribbon consistency. At this point, add lemon juice and salt and whisk again. Sauce will slightly transform in colour to a paler version and will also loosen up to a perfect consistency of a Hollandaise sauce.
- Add the orange juice and mix again. The sauce will become a bit thinner in texture.
- Serve your sauce immediately, sprinkle a bit of an orange rasp on top and enjoy!