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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A tart pie filled with lemon custard topped with a light meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. 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 saucepan, thicken 2 cups of milk with 1 tablespoon of corn starch over medium heat until it boils.

  3. In a bowl, mix the lemon juice, lemon rind, 1 cup of sugar, and 3 egg yolks until well combined.

  4. Stir the thickened milk into the lemon mixture and pour it into a pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the 3 egg whites with 1 tablespoon of sugar until frothy, then spread it over the pie filling.

  2. Bake the pie in the oven until the meringue is lightly browned, about a few seconds.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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 to the lemon custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk so the custard sets to a sliceable filling.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form the light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until frothy before spreading. Egg whites whipped with sugar form a foam that holds its shape and browns in the oven. Spreading the meringue over the filling while it is still underwhipped can leave it weepy or flat, so the whites should be fully foamy before topping the pie.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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