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Lemon Fie

A lemon custard filling topped with folded egg whites, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Fie

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. In a double boiler, combine the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, egg yolks, and sugar. Cook until thickened.

  2. Once cool, gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the baked pie crust.

  2. Place in a 350°F (175°C) oven to brown the top.

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

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Lemon
Its juice and rind add the sharp acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.
Egg yolks
They thicken the filling as they cook and set it into a smooth, sliceable custard.
Sugar
It sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's tartness.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they add lightness and airiness to the top layer.

The step that matters

Cook the yolk mixture until thickened. Egg yolk proteins set gently as they heat. If the mixture gets too hot or cooks too fast, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy, and if it is undercooked it will stay runny and not hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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