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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie made with sugar, lemon, butter, egg yolks, soaked bread, and frosted with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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. 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

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, lemon juice, butter, and egg yolks.

  3. Pour boiling water over the slice of bread and let it soak.

  4. Combine the soaked bread with the sugar mixture.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pie dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and spread over the pie.

  2. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the frosting 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the lemon filling as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks, they form the frosting that bakes to a golden top.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and bright lemon flavour.
Bread
Soaked in boiling water, it adds body and softens the filling.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks so the frosting holds its shape and bakes to a golden, airy topping rather than collapsing into the filling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter, bread, 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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