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Dessert

A Very Rich Lemon Pie

A lemon pie made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, brandy, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

A Very Rich Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the yellow part of the lemon rind and squeeze the juice.

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy with the egg yolks.

Make the filling

  1. Stir in the grated rind, lemon juice, flour, and brandy.

  2. Whip the egg whites and gently fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake in a pie crust.

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. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the filling, while whipped whites add air and lightness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, creamed with butter, helps build a smooth texture.
Lemon
Juice adds acidity and the rind adds bright citrus aroma.
Flour
Thickens the filling and gives it body so it holds its shape.
Brandy
Adds aroma and depth of flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whipped whites hold air bubbles that give the filling lift and lightness. Folding gently keeps those bubbles from collapsing, while vigorous stirring deflates them and makes the pie dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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