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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie with a buttery crust and frosted topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 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.

Make the filling

  1. Grate the rind of the lemon and squeeze out the juice.

  2. In a bowl, combine the lemon juice, grated rind, sugar, egg yolks, rolled crackers, and butter.

  3. Add the milk last and mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set, like a custard pie.

Make the frosting and finish

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg whites until frothy, then add the powdered sugar and lemon extract.

  2. Spread the frosting on the baked pie and brown it 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Walnut + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and enrich it, helping it set like a custard.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the frosting and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Milk
Adds liquid and body to the filling so it can set into a custard.
Rolled crackers
Add body to the filling and help it hold together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Spread the frosting on the baked pie and brown it in the oven.. Egg white foam can deflate or brown unevenly if overbaked or spread on a hot filling, so watch closely while it colors.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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