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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A pie with a lemon custard filling made from lemon juice, rind, sugar, corn starch, egg, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the water in a saucepan.

  2. Wet the corn starch with a little cold water.

  3. Stir the wet corn starch into the boiling water.

  4. Once it boils up, pour the mixture over the sugar and butter in a bowl.

  5. After the mixture cools, add the egg and lemon juice and rind.

Bake the pie

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust.

  2. Bake with both upper and lower crusts.

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

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the boiled water into a filling that sets when cooled.
Egg
Adds richness and helps the filling set as it cooks.
Lemon
Provides the sharp acidity and aroma that define the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth texture and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the wet corn starch into the boiling water. Corn starch must be fully dispersed in cold water first and then added to boiling liquid, so the starch granules gelatinise evenly and thicken the filling without lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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