Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with a lightly browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. 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 filling

  1. Mix the flour and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, and a small amount of grated lemon rind.

  3. Stir in the cold water.

  4. Pour the mixture into a double boiler and cook until it thickens and becomes clear.

  5. Pour the filling into a pre-baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. For the meringue, beat the egg whites with 1-2 tablespoons of sugar and a little vanilla until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie filling and brown slightly in a 350°F (175°C) 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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Coffee + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as they set with the heat.
Flour
Thickens the lemon filling so it holds its shape when sliced.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharp lemon acidity.
Lemon
Provides the sour flavour and aroma of the filling, from juice and rind.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, stable meringue topping.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until it thickens. Flour starch and egg yolk proteins must be cooked fully to thicken the filling. Undercooked, it stays runny and can soften the crust and meringue. Stirring gently in a double boiler helps prevent lumps and scorching.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes