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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a pie dish with crust and bake until golden brown.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix together sugar, butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  2. Place the mixture on the stove and add boiling water.

  3. Once boiling, stir in flour dissolved in cold water.

  4. Cook until thickened, then pour into the baked crust.

Top and brown

  1. Whip egg whites to make meringue and spread on top of the pie.

  2. Return the pie to the oven to brown the meringue.

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. Butter + lemontop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness to the lemon custard.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets firm when cooked.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the airy, brownable meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped meringue.
Lemon juice and rind
Provide the sharp acidity and bright aroma of the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened. Flour starch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is cooked long enough. Undercooked starch leaves a runny filling that will not set when cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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