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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie made with eggs, sugar, corn starch, butter, and lemon juice, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and corn 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 starch base

  1. In a pot, bring 1½ cups of water to a boil.

  2. Stir in 3 tablespoons of corn starch until dissolved.

  3. Add a piece of butter the size of an egg.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat 3 egg yolks with 3 cups of sugar until well combined.

  2. Once the starch water is cool, mix in the sugar and egg mixture.

  3. Squeeze the juice of 2 lemons.

  4. Grate some lemon peel into the mixture.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake until set.

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

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling and add richness; whites are folded in for lightness.
Corn starch
Cooked into water, it thickens the filling so it sets and holds a slice.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sourness of the lemon.
Lemons
Juice adds sharp acidity; grated peel adds fragrant citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Cool the starch base before adding the eggs. Hot starch can scramble the egg yolks and make the filling grainy. Letting it cool first keeps the yolks smooth and lets the filling set evenly when baked.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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