Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard filling made with lemon zest, juice, sugar, water, egg yolk, butter, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the lemon

  1. Grate the yellow part of the lemon.

  2. Squeeze the juice into a dish.

Cook the filling

  1. Add the juice and all other ingredients to the dish.

  2. Set the dish in a pan of boiling water.

  3. Stir until the mixture thickens.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemon
Provides the juice and zest that give the filling its sharp, bright acidity and aroma.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity while adding body to the mixture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as its starch granules swell and gelatinize when heated with liquid.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps set the filling as its proteins coagulate with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture thickens. Cornstarch only thickens fully once it is hot enough to gelatinize, so the mixture must be stirred steadily to heat evenly. Egg yolk proteins can curdle and turn grainy if the filling gets too hot, so the heat should stay gentle.

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.

You might also like

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