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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie made with lemon juice, rind, sugar, corn starch, egg, butter, and baked in pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the water in a saucepan.

  2. Wet the corn-starch with a little cold water and stir it into the boiling water.

  3. Once it boils, pour the mixture over the sugar and butter.

  4. Let it cool, then add the egg and lemon juice and rind.

Bake

  1. Pour the filling into the pie crusts and bake.

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 + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn-starch
Thickens the filling as it heats with the water, giving the lemon custard its body.
Egg
Adds richness and helps the filling set as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice and rind
Provides acidity and aroma that give the pie its lemon flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the corn-starch into the boiling water. Corn-starch only thickens properly once it reaches a boil, and lumps form if it goes in dry or without being wetted first. Wetting it with cold water and stirring while it heats keeps the filling smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, 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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