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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A pie made with lemon zest, juice, eggs, milk, sugar, and soda biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 697 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons and strain the juice.

  2. Roll the soda biscuits and mix with the yolks of the eggs and milk.

  3. Add the lemon juice last.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake the pie.

  2. Top with beaten egg whites.

  3. Return to the oven for a few minutes to lightly brown the top.

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 + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  3. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Biscuit + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling and whites form a light topping that browns.
Soda biscuits
Crumbs add body to the filling and help it hold together.
Milk
Provides liquid and richness that give the filling a soft, creamy texture.
Lemons
Juice and rind add sharp acidity and bright aroma to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the acidity of the lemon.

The step that matters

Return to the oven for a few minutes to lightly brown the top.. Egg white topping can over-bake quickly, turning rubbery or weeping. A short, watched browning sets the meringue-like top while keeping the filling tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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