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Dessert

Lemon Meringue

A lemon meringue pie made with lemon zest, juice, sugar, egg yolks, bread, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Grate the yellow part of the lemon and squeeze out the juice and pulp.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together with the bread and lemon mixture.

  3. Add enough water to fill the pie, about 1 cup.

Bake

  1. Bake with an under crust until set.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  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

Lemon
Supplies juice and zest for tartness and bright aroma that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the acidity of the lemon.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and set it into a sliceable custard when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.

The step that matters

Bake with an under crust until set. Egg proteins set as the filling heats, so the custard must be baked only until it firms. Overbaking tightens the proteins further, causing the filling to weep liquid or crack.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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