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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue, baked in a crisp shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil ½ cup of sugar with hot water.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix egg yolks, cornstarch, and the remaining ½ cup of sugar.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling syrup and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the butter and mix well.

Bake and brown

  1. Bake a pie shell until crisp.

  2. Pour the filling into the baked shell.

  3. Beat the egg whites with 4 teaspoons of sugar.

  4. Pour the beaten egg whites over the filling.

  5. Brown lightly in the oven.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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).

Sugar and lemon 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

Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the lemon's tartness.
Cornstarch
Thickens the hot liquid into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling, and whipped whites form a light topping that browns.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the filling.
Lemon juice
Provides the bright acidity that gives the pie its tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture into the boiling syrup and cook for 5 minutes. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the liquid reaches a boil and is kept stirred. Adding the yolk mixture too fast or stopping early can leave lumps or a thin, runny filling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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