Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pies

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Lemon Pies

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.

Make the filling

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 3 eggs.

  3. Add 1 cup of butter, 1 cup of sugar, the peel and juice of 1 lemon, and ½ cup of milk mixed with 1 teaspoon of corn starch.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In another bowl, beat the whites of 3 eggs until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 4 tablespoons of sugar and a little lemon juice.

  3. Spread the meringue over the baked pie and return to the oven for a few minutes to harden.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + milktop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the lemon filling and add richness as they set.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the meringue.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and aroma that define the filling.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling so it sets when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be whipped to stiff peaks to trap air and form a stable foam. Under-whipped whites weep or slump, and grease or leftover yolk prevents them from foaming fully.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipes