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Dessert

Lemon Washington Pie

A lemon pie made with a batter of sugar, flour, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and a lemon glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon Washington 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar and beaten egg yolks.

  3. Sift in the baking soda and salt.

  4. Add the flour and cream of tartar.

  5. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  6. Divide the batter into three shallow cake pans.

  7. Bake until done.

Make the lemon filling

  1. For the lemon mixture, boil the cold water, sugar, and butter together.

  2. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold water until smooth.

  3. Add the cornstarch mixture to the boiling mixture.

  4. When thickened, remove from heat.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, and grated rind.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Whipped whites add lift and structure, while yolks enrich and thicken the lemon filling.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's airy batter together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the cake a tender crumb.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon mixture into a smooth, sliceable filling when boiled.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and adds acidity that works with the baking soda.

The step that matters

Thickening the lemon mixture with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be mixed smooth in cold water first, then fully boiled to thicken; undissolved lumps or under-boiling leave a pasty, starchy filling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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