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Dessert

Lemon Cream Pie

A baked pie with lemon custard filling topped with browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Cream 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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat together the butter and sugar.

  3. Stir the dissolved corn starch into the boiling water.

  4. Add the butter and sugar mixture to the hot water and mix well.

  5. Allow the mixture to cool, then add the lemon juice, lemon rind, and beaten egg yolks.

  6. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake without a top crust.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, sweeten to taste, and spread over the baked pie.

  2. Return the pie to the oven and brown the meringue slightly.

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 + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + lemontop 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 and a custard-like body.
Corn starch
Thickens the boiling water into a glossy, sliceable filling as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the beaten egg whites in the meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and gives the filling its bright flavour.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that sets into a light, airy meringue topping.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rich mouthfeel in the filling.

The step that matters

Cool the starch mixture before adding the egg yolks. Cornstarch thickens when boiled, and hot egg yolks added too early can scramble and curdle. Letting the mixture cool slightly lets the yolks blend in smoothly and thicken gently in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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