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Dessert

Eemox Pie

A lemon pie with a custard filling 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 ↓

Eemox Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Heat the lemons in the oven, then squeeze out the juice.

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

  4. Combine the lemon juice, boiled rind water, sugar, cornstarch dissolved in milk, butter, and egg yolks in a bowl.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into the pie crusts and bake until set.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding ½ cup sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pies and 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 during baking.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon filling so it holds its shape when sliced.
Lemons
Provide the sharp acidity and aroma that define the filling.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that sets into the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped meringue.

The step that matters

Baking the filled pie until set. Egg yolks in the filling set with heat, and underbaking leaves a runny custard, while overbaking can make it weep or turn grainy. Watch for a filling that is set at the edges and only slightly wobbly in the centre.

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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