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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a meringue topping baked in a pre-baked pastry shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Prepare the filling

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

  2. Cream the butter and 1 cup of sugar together.

  3. Add the flour, baking powder, egg yolks, lemon juice, and the grated rind of 1 lemon. Mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pre-baked pastry shell and bake until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add ½ cup of sugar to make meringue.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and bake for a few more 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken and set the filling, while whipped whites give the meringue its structure.
Lemons
Juice and rind provide the tart acidity and bright aroma that define the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, added gradually, helps stabilise the whipped egg whites in the meringue.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets firm when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites into meringue. Whites must be whipped until stiff, and sugar added gradually, to form a stable foam. Under-whipped whites or sugar added too fast can collapse or weep, leaving a runny, unstable topping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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