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Dessert

Lemon Meringue Pie

A tart pastry filled with lemon custard topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Meringue 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 lemons.

  2. Combine the juice with sugar and cornstarch in a bowl.

  3. Add boiling water and stir well.

  4. Cook the mixture over medium heat until thickened.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Stir in the egg yolks and butter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread currant jelly over the pre-baked pie crust.

  2. Pour the filling into the crust.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Spread the meringue over the filling.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the meringue is golden 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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  2. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 and a custard-like body.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping and sets when baked.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon juice and sugar mixture as it cooks.
Lemons
Provide the acidity that gives the filling its tart flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened. Cornstarch thickens only when it reaches a boil and is held there briefly. Undercooked filling stays runny and will not set when cooled. Egg yolks added after cooking thicken gently, so the filling should not be boiled again after they go in.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg, butter, walnut. 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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