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Dessert

Forest- City Lemon-pie

A lemon pie with raisins and cracker crumbs, baked in a deep crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Forest- City Lemon-pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Line a deep pie plate with the pastry.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, mix the lemon rind, lemon juice, raisins, cracker crumbs, boiling water, and sugar.

  2. Stir over medium heat until the mixture boils.

  3. Pour the filling into the pie crust.

Cover and bake

  1. Cover with an upper crust, wetting the edges to seal.

  2. Brush the crust with the beaten egg and make two or three small cuts in it.

  3. Bake until the crust is nicely browned.

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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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 flavour and aroma that define the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Cracker crumbs
Thicken the filling as they absorb the boiling liquid.
Egg
Browns the top crust when brushed on before baking.

The step that matters

Stir over medium heat until the mixture boils. Starch in the cracker crumbs must reach boiling to thicken the filling. Stopping early leaves a thin filling that can run or soak the crust.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, egg. 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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