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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked lemon custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, 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 crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix together the butter and flour with 1 egg until well combined.

  3. Press the mixture into a pie pan and bake until lightly golden.

Make the custard

  1. In a double boiler, beat 6 whole eggs and the yolks of the remaining 6 eggs with 1 cup sugar.

  2. Add the zest of 1 lemon and the juice of 4 lemons, and cook until thick.

  3. Pour the custard into the baked crust and bake for an additional 5 minutes.

Make and bake the meringue

  1. Beat the remaining 6 egg whites with ½ cup sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and bake until light brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the crust turn tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the crust together after baking.
Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook and whipped whites give the meringue its structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Lemons
Supply the acidity and bright flavor that balance the sweet custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until thick. Egg proteins thicken the filling as they heat, but if the heat is too high or the custard is cooked too long, the eggs scramble and the filling turns grainy. A double boiler keeps the heat gentle so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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