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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with lemon, sugar, water, flour, eggs, butter crackers, 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: Flour and butter 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

Make the filling

  1. Grate the lemon and mix it with sugar and flour.

  2. Add the water and stir well.

  3. Crush the butter crackers finely.

  4. Stir the crushed butter crackers into the mixture.

Bake the pie

  1. Beat the egg yolks.

  2. Add the beaten yolks along with the egg whites.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie plate and bake until set.

Frost and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites with sugar until soft peaks form.

  2. Spread the frosting on the pie.

  3. Brown the frosting slightly 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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 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. Lemon + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Lemon
Provides acidity and fresh citrus aroma that balance the sweetness of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white frosting.
Flour
Thickens the lemon mixture so the filling holds its shape when set.
Eggs
Egg yolks help the filling set into a firm, custard-like layer when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped whites trap air to form a light frosting that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites with sugar until soft peaks form. Whites must be whipped to soft peaks so they trap air and form a stable foam. Under-beaten foam slumps on the pie, while over-beaten whites turn dry and grainy and brown unevenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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