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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked lemon custard pie topped with a light meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until thick.

  2. Add sugar, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  3. Beat until thick and light colored.

  4. Dissolve cornstarch in a little water and add to the mixture.

  5. Pour into a pie shell.

Bake the filling

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until it puffs.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until light. Gradually add sugar. Beat until stiff.

  2. When the pie is slightly cooled, cover it with the frosting.

  3. Return to the oven and let it brown delicately.

  4. Serve cold.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and give it richness as they set with the cornstarch.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the meringue.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon mixture so it holds its shape when sliced.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, airy meringue topping.

The step that matters

Beat the meringue until stiff before topping the pie. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks with sugar added gradually; under-whipped whites lack the structure to hold up and can weep or collapse in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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