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Dessert

One-crust Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a meringue topping baked in a single crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

One-crust Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Grate the peel of the lemon, then remove the white covering beneath it. Press the lemon to extract all the juice.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the lemon juice, grated peel, hot water, cornstarch blended with a little water, and sugar.

  3. Boil the mixture until it thickens, then let it cool.

  4. Once cool, stir in the beaten egg yolks.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake the pie crust separately, pricking it with a fork to prevent blistering.

  2. Fill the baked crust with the lemon mixture.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the stiff egg whites to make meringue.

  3. Spread the meringue over the lemon filling and brown in the oven.

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

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 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).

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

Lemon
Its juice and peel supply the sharp, aromatic flavour that defines the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot lemon liquid into a sliceable, glossy custard as it boils.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable foam that becomes the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Boiling the lemon mixture until it thickens. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil, and the starch must be cooked to lose its raw taste and hold the filling firm once cooled. Underheating leaves a runny filling.

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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