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Lemon Meringue Pie

A tart pastry filled with lemon custard topped with a sweet meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Meringue 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 the crust

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

  2. Line a medium pie pan with the pie crust and bake until lightly golden.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with 4 tablespoons of sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

  2. Mix the corn starch with melted butter, then stir into the boiling milk and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Allow the milk mixture to cool, then slowly pour it over the egg mixture and stir to combine.

  4. Pour the filling into the baked crust and bake for 15 minutes.

Top and serve

  1. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites with 4 tablespoons of sugar and a tiny pinch of salt until frothy.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie filling and return to the oven to brown for a few minutes, being careful not to burn.

  3. Serve cold.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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 to the custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the lemon custard so it sets when cooled.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the lemon filling.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, stable meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped meringue.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooling the milk mixture before adding the yolks. Pouring hot starch-thickened milk onto raw egg yolks can scramble the yolks. Letting the milk cool first lets the yolks blend in smoothly, and the filling sets as it chills.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, corn, butter, 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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