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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: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Make the filling

  1. Grate the yellow rind of the lemon and add the juice.

  2. Mix in 1 cup of sugar, ¼ teaspoon of salt, and 2 tablespoons of flour; beat well.

  3. Add 1 cup of milk and pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites to a soft froth and gradually add ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue on top of the pie and return 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Lemon
Provides the sharp acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets into a sliceable custard.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the filling, helping it set softly when baked.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping, which sets and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilizes the whipped egg whites in the meringue.

The step that matters

Gradually adding sugar to the egg whites. Adding sugar slowly to beaten egg whites helps them form a stable, glossy foam. Added too fast or too early, the sugar can leave the meringue weeping or limp.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, milk, 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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