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Lemon Custard Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with a meringue crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Custard 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. Boil the water in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little cold water and stir it into the boiling water.

  3. Add the grated lemon rind and juice, and cook until thickened.

  4. In a bowl, beat the 1 remaining egg with 1 cup of sugar until light and creamy. Mix the egg-sugar mixture with the lemon mixture thoroughly and let it cool.

  5. Pour the cooled mixture into the baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the reserved egg whites with 2 tablespoons of sugar until stiff peaks form. Spread the meringue over the pie filling.

  2. Brown the pie in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the meringue 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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon mixture as it cooks into a smooth, sliceable custard.
Eggs
Add richness and help set the custard, and the whites form the meringue topping.
Lemon
Provides the tart, aromatic flavour that defines the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilises the whipped egg whites in the meringue.

The step that matters

Cooling the cooled mixture before pouring. Adding the egg-sugar mixture to a hot cornstarch base or pouring a warm filling can cause the eggs to scramble or the custard to stay runny; letting it cool lets the filling firm up and hold the meringue cleanly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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