Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Cream Pie

A baked pie with a lemon custard filling made from milk, cornstarch, sugar, butter, lemon juice, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little milk and add it to the boiling milk.

  3. Once it boils, beat in the egg yolks, lemon juice, lemon extract, and butter.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie plate lined with pastry that has a high rim.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until the pastry is cooked.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the body of the custard filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it boils and sets it into a sliceable texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the custard.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Dissolving the cornstarch before adding it to the boiling milk. Cornstarch added dry or in lumps clumps and won't thicken evenly. Dissolving it in cold liquid first lets the starch granules separate, so they swell and thicken the custard smoothly once heated.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, lemon, cinnamon, egg. 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 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes