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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) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lemon-pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, sugar, butter, milk, lemon juice, lemon rinds, and cornstarch until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. While the pie is baking, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add the powdered sugar and lemon flavoring.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked pie and return it to the oven to brown lightly.

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 + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness and a custard-like texture when set.
Cornstarch or arrowroot
Thickens the lemon filling so it sets firmly when baked.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the stable, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds the acidity that gives the filling its tart flavor.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks before adding sugar. Egg whites whip into a stable foam only if they are free of fat and yolk. Adding sugar gradually after they foam helps the meringue hold its shape and stay glossy instead of weeping or collapsing on the pie.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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