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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lemon Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, add cornstarch blended with a little cold water to boiling water, then boil for a moment.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in sugar.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the filling into the pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Beat egg whites until stiff, gradually add sugar to the egg whites, and spread meringue over the pie.

  3. Return to a 300°F (150°C) oven to brown slightly.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling water into a smooth, sliceable filling as it cooks and sets.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the filling into a creamy custard.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the pie's flavor and balances the sugar.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they form the airy structure of the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, when added to whites, stabilizes the meringue.

The step that matters

Cool the filling before adding the egg yolks. Adding beaten yolks to a very hot starch mixture can scramble them and leave lumps. Cooling first lets the yolks blend smoothly and set into a silky custard.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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