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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A pastry filled with a lemon custard thickened with cornstarch and topped with browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon filling

  1. Cut the lemon and combine it with 1 cup of cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture slowly.

  3. Simmer for a few minutes.

  4. Strain out the rinds and seeds, pressing all the juice out.

  5. Add 1 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in cold water to the lemon juice.

  6. Cook the mixture until it thickens.

  7. Add the beaten yolks of 2 eggs.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake the pie crust separately.

  2. Fill the crust with the lemon mixture.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar to the egg whites.

  3. Spread the meringue on top of the pie.

  4. Brown the meringue.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemon
Provides the sharp acidity and bright aroma that define the pie's flavor.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon juice mixture as it cooks, giving the filling its set.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the filling, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until it thickens. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a simmer or boil and the starch swells. If it is undercooked, the filling stays thin and runny and will not set when cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

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