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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie made with sugar, corn starch, egg, butter, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a cup, mix corn starch with a little cold water, then fill with boiling water and add butter.

  2. Let the mixture cool slightly, then stir in the egg and lemon juice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the filling into the prepared pie crusts.

  2. Bake until set.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (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

Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a smooth, sliceable body.
Egg
Adds richness and helps the filling set as it bakes.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides acidity and bright aroma from the juice and zest.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavour and a smoother texture.
Pie crusts
Hold the filling while it bakes and set into a sliceable pie.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool slightly before adding the egg. Egg proteins begin to coagulate at high heat. Stirring raw egg into a very hot starch mixture can cause it to scramble or curdle, so the mixture should cool slightly first.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, 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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