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Dessert

Lemon Cream Pie

A sweet pie with a lemon custard filling baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starch

  1. Dissolve corn starch in cold water, then stir into boiling water.

Make the filling

  1. Cream together sugar and butter in a bowl.

  2. Pour the hot starch mixture over the creamed sugar and butter.

  3. Let the mixture cool completely.

  4. Add lemon juice, lemon rind, and beaten egg to the cooled mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the filling into the pie crust and bake.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats and gives it a sliceable body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice and rind
Provides acidity and bright lemon aroma that define the pie's flavor.
Egg
Adds richness and helps the filling set as it bakes.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely before adding the egg. Adding beaten egg to a still-hot starch mixture can cause it to scramble into lumps. Cooling first lets the egg blend smoothly and set evenly in the baked filling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, butter, sugar, 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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