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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard filling baked in puff pastry and topped with a sweet meringue.

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 ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon filling

  1. In a small pot, combine lemon juice, grated rind, sugar, egg yolks, water, and cornstarch.

  2. Place the pot in a larger pot of boiling water and cook until thickened.

Bake and assemble

  1. Prepare a puff pastry crust and line a pie plate with it, baking until lightly browned.

  2. Once the crust is done, pour the lemon mixture into it.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding sugar, then spread over the pie.

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness and a custard-like texture when cooked.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon mixture as it heats, giving a smooth, sliceable filling.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, dissolved into whipped whites, stabilizes the meringue.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff, adding sugar gradually. Whites must be fully whipped and the sugar added slowly so the foam holds its shape and does not weep. Spreading the meringue over the filling while it is still warm helps it bond at the edges.

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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