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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked lemon custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the crust and filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a pie plate with a rich crust.

  3. In a double boiler, boil the milk and flour for 3 minutes.

  4. Add the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, sugar, and egg yolks to the mixture.

  5. Beat the mixture well.

  6. Stir in the milk and flour mixture.

  7. Pour the mixture into the pie plate.

Bake and top

  1. Bake for 15 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add the granulated sugar to the egg whites.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  5. Return the pie to the oven to brown.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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 lemon filling and add richness as they set with heat.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling holds its body when cut.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the filling and softens its flavor.
Lemon
Provides the sharp acidity and bright aroma that define the pie.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilizes the egg white foam of the meringue.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the meringue its airy structure and lift.

The step that matters

Gradually add the sugar to the egg whites. Adding sugar slowly lets it dissolve into the whipped whites, which stabilizes the foam. Added too fast or unwhipped, the sugar can leave the meringue weepy or prone to collapse.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, 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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