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Dessert

Lemon Cream Pie

A custard pie made with lemon, sugar, eggs, cornstarch, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon custard

  1. Grate the lemon peel.

  2. Add the sugar, then squeeze the juice of the lemons over the sugar.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Add the cornstarch dissolved in a little water, and mix thoroughly.

  5. Pour the mixture over the boiling water.

  6. Cook like custard.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake the pie crust until golden.

  2. Pour the custard into the baked crust.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites, gradually adding 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Cover the pie with the meringue.

  3. Brown the meringue lightly 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. 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

Lemons
Provide the juice and peel that give the filling its bright, sharp flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard filling and whites form the meringue topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook like custard. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred, so undercooking leaves the filling runny. Egg yolks also need gentle heat to set without curdling.

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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