Hollandaise Sauce

As someone who has been a lover of cooking and food for years, I have never made a hollandaise sauce. As far as I can remember, I have never even tasted a hollandaise sauce - either real or from a package. It's not a common household dish and I don't often eat at many high-end restaurants. It also tends to be offered very limitedly - reserved for things like Eggs Benedict and grilled asparagus. So, not personally knowing how this sauce was supposed to look or taste aside from textbook explanations, I dived into my first attempt making it.

Hollandaise sauce served on an English muffin.

I made a reduction of crushed peppercorns and shallots in some vinegar, reducing the mixture by half. I kept this warm, but not too warm.

Next I clarified my own butter by slowly melting, then boiling a pound of butter to remove the milk solids and leave only pure butterfat. I kept this warm, but not too warm.

Then I began with my egg yolks, continuously whipping them with a little water over a double boiler until they were pale yellow and thick.

Next, the moment of truth and the trickiest part - slowly but continuously whip the warm clarified butter into the egg yolks, beginning only a drop at a time, and speeding up only when the emulsion begins to form.

This was all going quite well up to this point - the sauce was smooth, pale yellow, and thick, just like the descriptions. But suddenly, after adding another drop of butter, the sauce just completely split on me, as hollandaise often does. It happened so fast, and went from such a pretty looking sauce to a curdled mess.

Broken hollandaise sauce looks like a curdled, grainy mess.

Despite my attempts to rescue it - depending on whether your sauce split because it was too hot or too cold, sometimes a drop of cold water may be added or a fresh egg yolk may be whipped in to save it, it was past the point of no return. I seasoned it to taste with fresh lemon juice and salt and pepper anyway, and discovered the taste was still excellent and rich and buttery, but the sauce didn't have that velvety, coat the tongue texture it was supposed to.

So what went wrong? Hollandaise sauce is very technical and there are so many variables.
Was the reduction too hot, too cold, reduced too much, or not reduced enough?
Was the clarified butter too hot, too cold, or not properly clarified and unstable?
Were the egg yolks whipped too little, too much, too quickly, or heated too much?
Was the butter added too quickly, or was too much butter added?
Was it the fact I did not have a stainless steel bowl and had to substitute glass?

Successful hollandaise sauce is thick, smooth, and velvety.

I may never know. What I do know, is my second attempt, sadly, turned out worse. I think this time either the egg yolks became too hot during cooking over the double boiler, or the bowl I used was too big and caused the eggs to overcook. I wasn't overly fond of my first taste of hollandaise sauce, now I am the type of person who has no problem eating rich sauces by the spoonful. But I don't much like the slightly sour flavor hollandaise imparts. After two failed attempts at making it, I think I dislike hollandaise sauce even more. Maybe one day I will perfect the art of making a perfect hollandaise.