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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Mix corn starch with a little milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk until boiling, then stir in the corn starch and boil for 1 minute.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add the egg yolks, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and the grated lemon rind and juice, then beat well.

  5. Line a deep pie plate with pastry and fill it with the lemon mixture.

Bake and top

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, gradually adding the remaining sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie and brown slowly.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the filling and the whites whip into the meringue topping.
Corn starch
Thickens the lemon filling as it boils, giving it a set, sliceable body.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart lemon and helps the egg whites hold stiff peaks.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and aroma that define the filling.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the cooked custard filling.

The step that matters

Cooling the cornstarch mixture before adding the egg yolks. Adding yolks to a very hot starch mixture can scramble them and leave lumps. Letting it cool first keeps the filling smooth, and the yolks then thicken it gently during baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, corn. 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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