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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie made with boiled water, cornstarch, butter, eggs, sugar, and lemon zest, baked in a pre-baked crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Mix cornstarch with a little cold water.

  2. Pour boiling water over the cornstarch mixture.

  3. Add butter, egg yolks, sugar, and grated lemons.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pre-baked pie crust.

  2. Beat egg whites until stiff and spread on top of the pie.

  3. Brown in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

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 + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it heats in the boiling water, giving it a set, sliceable body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the filling, while stiff whites form a light, brownable topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemons
Provide the main acidity and bright citrus aroma, with zest adding fragrant oils.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the cornstarch mixture. Cornstarch only thickens once its granules are fully wetted and heated to a boil, so the mixture must be stirred as the water goes in to avoid lumps and an uneven, runny filling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg, sugar, butter. 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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