Skip to main content

Lemon Meringue Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and rose are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,174 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Lemon Meringue Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks, lemon juice, and lemon peel.

  3. Fill one large pie shell or two small ones with the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites to a stiff meringue and gradually add the powdered sugar and rose-water.

  5. When the pies are done, remove them from the oven and quickly spread the meringue on top.

  6. Return the pies to the oven for 3 minutes to brown the meringue.

  7. Serve cold.

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 + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, rose. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes