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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon-flavored pie with a crumbly base and a sweet meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Mix bread crumbs, sugar, water, egg yolks, butter, lemon juice, and lemon rind in a bowl.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie dish lined with pastry.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with 4 tablespoons of sugar and your chosen flavoring until stiff.

  2. Spread the meringue on top of the pie after it has baked.

  3. Return the pie to the oven for a few minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 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

Egg yolks
Bind the filling and enrich it, helping it set into a creamy custard.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the filling and give it body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor that balances the sugar.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable meringue that browns when baked.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold firm peaks; under-whipped whites collapse and weep, while sugar added gradually helps them stay stable and glossy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, 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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