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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with a browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lemon 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. Stir corn starch into cold water in a small bowl.

  2. Add boiling water and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  4. Pour mixture into a prepared pie crust and bake until set.

Top and brown

  1. Beat egg whites with a little sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread meringue over the pie 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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Corn starch
Thickens the cooking liquid into a set, sliceable custard filling.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the filling set as it bakes.
Lemon juice
Supplies the sharp acidity that defines the lemon filling.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, browned meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilizes the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Egg whites must be whipped fully to hold air; underwhipped or greasy whites will weep or collapse under the meringue. Sugar added gradually helps the foam stay stable.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, 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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