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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a meringue topping made from flour, sugar, boiling water, lemon juice, egg, butter, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 flour and sugar together.

  2. Slowly add boiling water and cook for 20 minutes, stirring frequently.

  3. Add mixture to beaten yolk, then add butter and lemon juice, cooking until egg thickens.

Assemble and bake

  1. Once cool, place mixture in baked pie crust.

  2. Cover with meringue and bake until light 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. Flour + sugartop 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. Flour + lemontop 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

Egg yolk
Thickens the filling as it cooks, giving it a rich, set custard body.
Flour
Thickens the filling with starch so it sets as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the filling.
Egg white
Whips into the meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the yolk into the filling. Egg yolk thickens as its proteins set with heat, but if it is added too fast or overheated it can curdle. Adding the hot mixture slowly while stirring keeps the custard smooth and properly thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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