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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) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Bake the lemons for a short time.

  2. Squeeze and strain the juice.

  3. Boil the lemon rind in ½ cup of water.

  4. Mix the lemon juice, boiled rind water, sugar, sweet milk, cornstarch, butter, and egg yolks.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  6. Bake until set.

Make and add the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.

  2. Gradually add 8 tablespoons of sugar until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  4. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 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. Sugar + buttertop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as they set when baked.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon filling so it holds its shape when sliced.
Lemons
Provide the tart citrus flavor and acidity that balance the sugar.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped meringue.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Underbaking leaves the egg-yolk filling runny, while overbaking can make it weep or turn rubbery. The yolks must cook just enough to thicken, and cornstarch helps the filling hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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