Skip to main content
Dessert

A Famous Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a puff pastry crust and a citrus filling made from grated rind, pulp, and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

A Famous Lemon Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the lemon

  1. Grate the rind of the lemon.

  2. Peel the lemon carefully, removing the sections without breaking them.

  3. Pick apart the lemon sections, removing thin skins and seeds.

  4. Place the pulp on a plate to catch the juice.

Make the filling

  1. In a shallow bowl, slightly beat the egg with a fork.

  2. Gradually add the sugar to the beaten egg.

  3. Mix in the grated rind, pulp, and juice of the lemon.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie plate with rich puff pastry and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Cut narrow strips of puff pastry and arrange them in a cross pattern on top of the filling.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until the mixture rises and is slightly brown.

  4. Cover lightly with paper until the crust is well baked.

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

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Beaten egg sets the filling and gives it body as it bakes.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides the bright acidity and aroma that flavour the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, crisp crust that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Covering the crust with paper. Puff pastry can over-brown before the filling sets. Covering it lightly with paper slows browning while the crust finishes baking, so the pastry stays golden rather than dark.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More lemon pie recipes

Filling 23Apple 11Raisin 4 See all 602 →

You might also like

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