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Dessert

Two-crust Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with two crusts, filled with lemon slices and a lemon-flour custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Two-crust Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Line your pie dish with the pie crust.

  3. Roll the lemons to soften them.

  4. Grate the rind.

  5. Cut the lemons into thin slices.

  6. Remove the seeds.

Make the filling

  1. Spread the lemon slices evenly over the crust.

  2. Sprinkle 1 cup of sugar over the lemon slices.

  3. Mix 4 tablespoons of flour with cold water to make a paste.

  4. Add boiling water to the paste while stirring until thickened.

  5. Stir in a pinch of salt and the grated lemon rind.

  6. Pour the thickened mixture over the sugar and lemon.

Bake

  1. Cover with another crust, cutting slits to let out steam.

  2. Bake until golden 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Lemons
Provide the tart acidity and the fragrant flavor of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Flour
Thickens the filling as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Thickening the flour paste with boiling water. Flour starch thickens only when it is hot and evenly dispersed. Stirring while adding the boiling water keeps lumps from forming and gives a smooth, evenly thickened filling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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