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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a meringue topping made from lemon zest, sugar, water, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Grate the lemon.

  2. Beat the eggs, sugar, and flour together.

  3. Add the grated lemon and water to the mixture.

  4. Cook the mixture over boiling water until thickened.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake the pie crust until golden.

  2. Fill the baked crust with the lemon mixture.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the reserved egg white to a froth, then add 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 filling as they set and give richness to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the beaten egg white meringue.
Flour
Helps thicken the lemon filling so it holds its shape when sliced.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and bright lemon aroma that define the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened. Egg proteins set as they heat, but overheating can make them curdle or turn grainy. Cooking gently over boiling water and stopping once the mixture thickens keeps the filling smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour. 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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