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Dessert

Another Lemon Pie Recipe

A lemon pie with a meringue topping made from egg yolks, sugar, flour, milk, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Another Lemon Pie Recipe

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 filling

  1. Grate the rind of the lemon.

  2. Squeeze out the juice.

  3. Chop the remaining lemon finely.

  4. Heat the egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl.

  5. Mix in the flour, milk, lemon juice, and chopped lemon.

  6. Pour the mixture into a medium-sized pie plate.

  7. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites with 1 tablespoon of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the pie.

  3. Brown slightly in the oven.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 as they set with the milk and juice.
Flour
Stabilises the filling so it sets smoothly rather than runny.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and aroma of the filling from its juice and rind.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Egg whites under-whipped will collapse and weep, while sugar added gradually helps them hold air and form a stable meringue that browns evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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