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Dessert

Lemon Custard Pie

A baked pie with a lemon custard filling and frosted topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Lemon Custard 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.

Prepare

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

Make and bake the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, corn starch, sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, milk, and salt until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pie crust and bake until set.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the sugar for frosting.

  2. Spread the frosting over the baked pie and return to the oven until lightly browned.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 custard and add richness and a smooth, creamy texture when set.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and lemon mixture so the custard sets firm when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the light topping, which browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and, dissolved into the whites, stabilizes the meringue topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs and starch set into a custard.
Lemon juice and rind
Adds tart citrus acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the custard.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add the sugar gradually. Sugar added slowly to whites helps them hold a stable, glossy foam. Adding it all at once or under-beating can leave a loose topping that weeps or fails to brown well.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, corn, sugar, milk. 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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