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Dessert

Lemon Tarts

Old recipes for baked lemon custard pies, filled with a cooked or creamed lemon, sugar and egg mixture, often topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Hamilton, Ohio. First Methodist Episcopal church. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix well and let come to a boil.

  2. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately.

  3. Beat to a cream the butter, sugar, lemon rind, and yolks of eggs.

  4. Add milk and lemon juice.

  5. Put white of eggs in last.

  6. Place the sugar, juice of lemons, yolks of eggs, and butter in kettle and stir until it boils up thick.

  7. Mix thoroughly the juice and grated rind of the lemon, sugar, cornstarch, and yolks of eggs.

  8. Pour over them the boiling water, and cook until it thickens.

Bake and top

  1. Bake short pie crust in gem pans, and fill with custard.

  2. Bake in raw crust.

  3. Put in pastry shell that has been baked.

  4. Have crust baked, and fill with mixture.

  5. Bake in lower crust.

  6. Spread with stiff whites of eggs with 2 tablespoons of sugar; place in oven to brown.

  7. Make a meringue of the whites of eggs and a little sugar.

  8. Beat the whites of the eggs; add 1 teaspoon sugar for each white.

  9. Put the whites, well beaten with 1 teaspoon sugar, on top of pie.

  10. Spread on top of pie and brown.

  11. Spread on top of pie; return to oven and brown slightly.

  12. Put in oven and brown.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

845Calories
28 gProtein
26 gFat
124 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 8 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Waternot in our table0
Pienot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Hamilton, Ohio. First Methodist Episcopal church. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Yolks thicken the filling and whites form the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue whites stay stiff and glossy.
Lemon juice
Adds the sharp acidity that defines the lemon filling.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it cooks in boiling water.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until it thickens. Egg yolks and cornstarch only thicken fully when the mixture reaches a boil while stirred. Undercooked filling stays runny and can weep once cut, so keep stirring and cook until it is clearly thick.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, 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.

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