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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie baked in pastry crust, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix cornstarch and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add boiling water while stirring constantly and cook for two minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and add butter, egg yolks, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

Bake and top

  1. Line a pie plate with rich pastry and pour in the cooled mixture.

  2. Bake until the pastry is well browned, or bake the pastry first.

  3. Cool slightly, then cover with meringue made from the whites of two eggs beaten stiff with 2 tablespoons powdered sugar and ½ tablespoon lemon juice.

  4. Return to the oven to bake the meringue until lightly 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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

Cornstarch
Thickens the boiled mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard filling.
Egg yolks
Enrich and set the custard, giving it body and a rich texture.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the sharp lemon flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to form the airy, browned meringue topping.

The step that matters

Add boiling water while stirring constantly. Cornstarch clumps if it meets liquid unevenly. Constant stirring keeps it dispersed so that, as it heats, the starch swells evenly and thickens the filling smoothly rather than lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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