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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with a glossy meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

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. Juice the lemon and set aside.

  2. In a bowl, mix the lemon juice, sugar, corn starch, egg yolks, and sweet milk until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Make and add the meringue

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add 3 tablespoons of sugar to the egg whites, continuing to beat until glossy.

  3. Spread the meringue over the baked pie and return to the oven until lightly browned.

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 + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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, and whipped whites form the meringue topping.
Corn starch
Thickens the lemon filling as it heats so it sets into a sliceable custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, in the meringue, stabilizes the whipped whites for a glossy top.
Lemon
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the filling its tart flavor.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until set. Corn starch thickens only when the filling is heated enough to swell and set. Pulling it too early leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can make it weep or turn tough.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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