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Dessert

Lemojv Pie

A lemon pie with a meringue topping made from lemon rind, juice, eggs, sugar, butter, milk, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Lemojv Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Grate the rinds of the lemons and squeeze the juice onto the grated rind.

  2. In a bowl, beat together the egg yolks, sugar, and butter until smooth. Gradually add the milk and mix well.

  3. Divide the mixture into four pie crusts.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until set and lightly golden.

  2. Beat the reserved egg whites until stiff, then gradually add sugar. Spread the meringue over the tops of the pies 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + milktop 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling, and whites whip into the meringue topping.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the filling.
Lemons
Juice and rind provide the sharp, aromatic flavor of the filling.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and, in the meringue, stabilizes the whipped whites.
Milk
Adds liquid and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Beat the reserved egg whites until stiff, then gradually add sugar.. Whites must be beaten to stiff peaks with sugar added slowly; under-whipped or greasy whites will weep or collapse in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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