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Dessert

Fine Lemon Pie

A tart lemon custard topped with meringue baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fine Lemon Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the shell

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make a shell of rich pie crust and bake it.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar and flour.

  2. Add lemon juice, grated rind, butter, and boiling water; cook until thick.

Meringue and bake

  1. Beat the reserved egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 1 tablespoon sugar.

  2. Fill the baked pie shell with the lemon filling, top with meringue, and bake until browned.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.
Flour
Thickens the lemon filling as its starch swells when heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the filling and balances its sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a smoother, silkier filling texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the meringue its light, airy structure.
Lemon rind
Adds fragrant lemon aroma from the peel's oils.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated enough to swell and set. Filling pulled off the heat too early stays thin and runny, so it will not hold a clean slice.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, egg. 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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