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Dessert

Lemon Cream Pie

A custard pie made with milk, cornstarch, sugar, lemon juice and zest, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler until boiling.

  2. Add the cornstarch and stir until thickened, then remove from heat.

  3. Mix in the sugar, lemon juice and zest, butter, and salt.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Let cool, then frost as desired.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth custard as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides acidity and aroma from the juice and zest.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Add the cornstarch and stir until thickened. Cornstarch needs to be heated while stirred to swell and thicken the milk. Removing the pan too early leaves the filling thin, and it may not set properly in the baked pie.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, 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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