Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pie

A sweet tart made with lemon slices, sugar, butter, and a cornstarch-based filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons, reserving any bitter parts for the filling.

  2. Remove the white skin from the lemons and slice them thinly, removing the seeds.

Make the filling

  1. Cook the cornstarch in a saucepan for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Add the butter and sugar to the saucepan, then remove from heat.

  3. When slightly cooled, mix in the beaten egg and the juice and grated rind of 1 lemon.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the lemon slices, sugar, grated rind, and flour in a pie dish until all ingredients are used.

  2. Sprinkle the water over the layers and cover with a top crust.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

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. Lemon + flourtop 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

Lemons
Provide the sharp acidity and aromatic oil that flavour the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps set the filling by binding water.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a sliceable, set texture.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the filling when gently cooked.
Flour
Adds additional thickening so the layered filling holds together.

The step that matters

Cooking the cornstarch. Cornstarch must be heated long enough to gelatinise fully, or the filling stays thin and grainy. Cooling slightly before adding the egg keeps it from scrambling.

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.

More lemon pie recipes

Filling 23Apple 11Raisin 4 See all 602 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes