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Dessert

Gold Pie

A lemon custard pie baked without a crust, topped with stiffened egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gold Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Grate the lemon peel and squeeze the juice into a bowl, removing all seeds.

  2. Add sugar, milk, cornstarch, and beaten egg yolks to the bowl and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie dish and bake without an upper crust at 350°F (175°C).

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, sweeten them, and pour over the baked pie.

  2. Return the pie to the oven to stiffen the egg white 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to the filling.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff meringue topping that sets and browns in the oven.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk and lemon mixture as it heats.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and the meringue topping.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from its peel and juice.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff and free of any fat or yolk, because fat blocks foam formation. Properly stiff whites hold air and set into a stable topping instead of weeping or collapsing.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, 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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