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Dessert

Lemon Apple Pie

A baked apple pie flavored with lemon, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Lemon Apple Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Stew the apples until they are a pulp.

  2. Mix in the butter, lemon juice, and grated peel from two lemons.

  3. Add the sugar and egg yolks, then stir until combined.

  4. Pour the mixture into a raw pie crust and bake.

Top and brown

  1. Whip the egg whites with a little sugar until stiff, then spread on top of the pie.

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

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  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

Apples
Break down into a pulp to form the body of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set, giving it a custard-like body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue whip and brown.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma from the juice and grated peel.

The step that matters

Return the pie to the oven to brown the meringue. Meringue can weep or stay pale if underbaked or overbaked. A short, watched bake sets the whites and browns the sugar without drying or collapsing the topping.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

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