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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A tart lemon custard filling baked in a pie crust, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

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

  2. Heat slowly and simmer for a few minutes.

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

  4. Add 1 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of corn starch dissolved in cold water. Cook until thickened.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten yolks of 2 eggs.

Assemble and brown

  1. Bake the pie crust separately, then fill it with the lemon mixture.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, adding 1 teaspoon of sugar. Spread on top of the pie and brown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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 main citrus flavour and tartness of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the acidity of the lemon.
Corn starch
Thickens the lemon juice mixture as it cooks into a custard-like filling.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling and whites form a stiff, browning meringue topping.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened. Cornstarch needs to reach a boil to fully thicken. If the filling is removed too early it stays runny, and if the egg yolks are added to a very hot mixture without care they can scramble. Stirring while it cooks keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, 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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