You know how it can be with Hollandaise. You're slowly, carefully, whisking liquid clarified butter into your egg yolks, when – oops! – it suddenly splits and you have a bowl of useless curdled slop. This recipe uses soft, non-liquid butter, dropped in a blob at a time, melting it on the warm bowl slowly enough to stop it from splitting. We guarantee you this won’t split. It goes fantastically well with artichokes, white fish and, of course, poached eggs and steamed spinach on toast - classic Eggs Florentine

3 tbsps white wine vinegar

1 tbsp water

6 black peppercorns

1 bay leaf

3 egg yolks

125g soft butter. Take it out of the fridge, cut into 1cm cubes, then leave to soften at room temperature for a couple of hours

salt and pepper

• Boil the vinegar and water with the peppercorns and the bay leaf until the liquids are reduced to 1 tablespoon. Leave to cool for 12 minutes

• Get a biggish saucepan of water up to a rolling boil, then turn off the heat. Put the egg yolks into a steel bowl with 10g of butter and a pinch of salt, whisk until the butter has blended with the egg yolks

• Strain the cooled vinegar mixture into the eggs, and set the bowl on top of the saucepan

• Whisk in the remaining soft butter, a couple of cubes at a time, until the sauce is smooth and shiny and has the consistency of thick cream. Make sure each blob is fully melted and blended in before adding the next one. Add a little salt and pepper, and serve as soon as you can. We usually steam the spinach first, then once the sauce has been made, make the toast and poach the eggs

• In the unlikely event of the sauce curdling (usually because the heat is too high, or the butter has been added too quickly) it can sometimes be saved by removing from the bain marie and beating in 1 tablespoon of cold water