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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) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a saucepan, mix sugar, cornstarch, and salt.

  3. Gradually add water and cook over medium heat until thickened.

  4. In a bowl, beat egg yolks and stir in lemon juice and zest.

  5. Slowly add the hot mixture to the egg yolks, then return to the saucepan.

  6. Cook for 2 minutes, then remove from heat and stir in butter.

  7. Pour filling into the pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread meringue over the filling and bake for 10 minutes until golden.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and enrich it with richness and a smooth custard texture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon mixture into a sliceable filling as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped meringue.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the filling a smooth, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Slowly add the hot mixture to the egg yolks. Adding hot liquid to yolks too quickly can scramble them. Tempering gradually raises the yolks' temperature so they blend in smoothly and thicken the filling without lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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