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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a meringue topping made from sugar, butter, eggs, lemon zest, lemon juice, flour, sweet milk, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Beat sugar and butter until light.

  2. Add eggs (reserve 2 whites), lemon rind, lemon juice, flour, and sweet milk. Stir well.

  3. Pour mixture into pie crust and bake until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat reserved egg whites until stiff. Gradually add powdered sugar to the whites.

  2. Spread meringue over baked pie.

  3. Brown lightly in the oven.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the lemon filling as it bakes, and whites whip into the meringue topping.
Flour
Starch thickens the filling so it sets into a sliceable custard rather than runny liquid.
Butter
Fat adds richness and a tender texture to the filling.
Lemon juice
Acidity gives the filling its tart flavour and helps balance the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Beat reserved egg whites until stiff. Whites must be beaten until they hold firm peaks before sugar is added, because well-whipped foam gives the meringue its volume and stable structure. Under-whipped whites will weep or collapse on the pie.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, flour, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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