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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked lemon custard pie topped with browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

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.

Make the lemon filling

  1. Mix the corn starch with a little of the milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk until boiling, then stir in the corn starch mixture and boil for 1 minute.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add the egg yolks, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and the lemon juice and rind, and beat well.

  5. Line a deep pie plate with pastry and fill it with the lemon mixture.

  6. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 30 minutes.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the remaining sugar to the egg whites.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie and brown slowly.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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 whip into the meringue topping.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and lemon mixture so the filling sets rather than running.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilises the whipped egg whites in the meringue.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and aroma that give the filling its tart flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling and adds richness.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Adding egg yolks to a very hot starch mixture can scramble them and leave lumps. Cooling first lets the yolks blend smoothly and thicken gently in the filling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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