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Dessert

Kate's Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie with a buttery crust and frothy egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Kate's Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel the yellow rind from the lemon and grate the remainder.

  2. In a bowl, combine the grated lemon and water to make ½ cup.

  3. Beat the egg whites and yolks together, then mix in the sugar, butter, and flour until smooth.

  4. Add the lemon mixture to the egg mixture and stir well.

Bake the pie

  1. Prepare a pie crust, prick it to prevent puffing, and bake until lightly golden.

  2. Quickly pour the lemon filling into the crust and return to the oven until set.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites with a little sugar and your preferred extract, then spread over the pie.

  2. Return the pie to the oven for a few moments to dry the topping.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Yolks and whites thicken the filling and set it into a sliceable custard.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and aroma that define the pie's tart flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart filling and helps stabilize the beaten egg white topping.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the filling.
Flour
Stabilizes the filling so it holds its shape when cut.

The step that matters

Pour the filling quickly and return it to the oven. Once the filling is in the crust it should be set in the oven promptly, because the egg-thickened custard can curdle or weep if it sits or overheats before setting. Meringue topping also needs a brief dry-out to stay stable.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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