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Dessert

Cheap Lemon Custard

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Cheap Lemon Custard

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.

Prepare the custard

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the corn starch with ½ cup of sugar and set aside.

  3. In another bowl, beat the eggs and add the milk, butter, and juice from the lemons.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the corn starch mixture and stir until smooth.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add the remaining sugar to make meringue.

  2. Spread the meringue over the custard filling.

  3. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the meringue is 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook and add richness and structure to the filling.
Corn starch
Thickens the lemon liquid into a smooth, sliceable custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the meringue.
Lemons
Provide the acidic juice that gives the custard its bright flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, softer custard texture.

The step that matters

Combine the egg mixture with the corn starch mixture and stir until smooth. Corn starch must be fully dispersed before heat is applied, or it forms lumps that won't thicken the custard evenly. Starch only thickens properly once it is evenly mixed into the liquid and heated.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, corn, sugar, milk, 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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