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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a buttery crust, lemon filling, and frosted with beaten egg whites and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix sugar with flour.

  2. Add to beaten egg yolks.

  3. Stir in grated lemon rind, lemon juice, and butter.

  4. Pour in boiling water and cook until thickened.

Bake and top

  1. Fill the pie crust and bake.

  2. Frost with beaten egg whites and powdered sugar.

  3. Return to oven to brown.

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 + buttertop 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. Flour + eggtop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps thicken it when cooked.
Lemon
Provides the tart acidity and aroma that flavour the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling as it cooks with the boiling water.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the filling; whites whip into the topping.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thickened. Flour starch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is cooked long enough. Undercooked starch leaves the filling thin and runny, so it may not set when cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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