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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A pie with a lemon custard filling baked in a crust and topped with frothy egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Grate the rind of the lemon.

  2. Squeeze the juice from the lemon.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the lemon juice, grated rind, flour, sugar, water, and egg yolks.

  4. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

Bake the pie

  1. Pour the filling into a baked pie crust.

  2. Bake the pie until it is light brown.

Top and brown

  1. Whip the egg whites to a froth with sugar.

  2. Spread the frothy egg whites over the pie.

  3. Brown the pie again in the oven.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Lemon
Provides acidity and aroma, with the grated rind adding fragrant oils.
Flour
Starch thickens the filling as it heats and swells.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the whipped egg whites hold their froth.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they heat, giving it a rich, set body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the topping light structure and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Boil the filling until it thickens. Flour starch only thickens fully once it has been heated and swells, so the filling must reach a boil. Egg yolks are heat-sensitive and can curdle or scramble if the mixture overheats, so the filling needs to thicken without going too hot.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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