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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked pie with a lemon custard filling topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the filling

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

  2. In a saucepan, mix sugar, cornstarch, and salt.

  3. Gradually add water, stirring until smooth.

  4. Cook over medium heat until thickened.

  5. In a bowl, beat egg yolks and add a small amount of the hot mixture to temper them. Stir the egg yolk mixture back into the saucepan.

  6. Cook for 2 minutes.

  7. Remove from heat.

  8. Stir in lemon juice and zest.

  9. Pour the filling into the baked pie crust.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. In a clean bowl, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks form.

  2. Gradually add sugar.

  3. Beat until stiff peaks form.

  4. Spread meringue over the lemon filling, sealing the edges.

  5. Bake for 10-12 minutes until meringue is golden.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 add richness when cooked with the hot mixture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon filling as it cooks with the water.
Egg whites
Whipped to form the light, airy structure of the meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped meringue.

The step that matters

Tempering the egg yolks. Adding hot mixture to yolks gradually raises their temperature without scrambling them. Adding them straight into the hot filling can cause lumps and curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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