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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon-flavored pie with a buttery crust and a frosted topping made from eggs, sugar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 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. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs slightly.

  3. Add the sugar, lemon juice, grated lemon rind, and water to the eggs and mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

Make the frosting and finish

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and lemon juice or vanilla, continuing to beat until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the frosting over the cooled pie.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 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).

Sugar and lemon 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
Thicken the lemon filling as they set, giving it structure and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds the acidity and bright lemon flavour to the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, stable meringue topping.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps it hold its stiff peaks.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff without overbeating, because the foam traps air and sets the meringue. Adding sugar gradually helps the foam stay stable and glossy.

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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