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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon 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 crust

  1. Bake the pie crust.

  2. Prick the crust well.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. In a double boiler, stir in the sugar, butter, lemon juice, lemon rind, and salt.

  3. Gradually add the cold water while stirring until the mixture thickens like drop batter.

Assemble and brown the meringue

  1. Once the crust is cool, pour in the cooled lemon mixture.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Beat in the powdered sugar.

  4. Fold in the additional tablespoon of powdered sugar.

  5. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  6. Brown the meringue 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. Butter + lemontop 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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling as they heat, giving it a sliceable, custard-like body.
Egg whites
Whipped whites trap air, forming a light, stable meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the filling.
Lemon
Its juice supplies sharp acidity that balances the sweetness, and its rind adds aroma.

The step that matters

Thickening the lemon filling. Egg thickens as it heats, so the mixture must be stirred steadily over the double boiler and the cold water added gradually. Adding it too fast or heating too hard can cause lumps or curdling, leaving a thin or grainy filling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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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