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Dessert

Lemon Custard Pie

A custard pie flavored with lemon, topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 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. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  2. Cream the sugar and egg yolks together.

  3. Add the water and then the milk, stirring well.

  4. Mix in the melted butter.

  5. Add the lemon juice and grated lemon rind just before filling the crust to prevent curdling.

Bake

  1. Bake for 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

Top and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks, then add 2 teaspoons of sugar.

  2. Spread the whipped egg whites on top of the baked pies.

  3. Return the pies to the oven and lightly brown the egg whites.

  4. Serve the pies cold.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard as they set, and whites form the stiff meringue topping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the whipped egg whites hold their stiff peaks.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and aroma that define the pie's tangy flavour.
Milk
Supplies liquid and body, giving the custard its creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel in the filling.

The step that matters

Add the lemon just before filling the crust. Lemon juice is acidic, and heating it with egg-thickened custard for long can make the proteins curdle or turn grainy. Adding it late keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, 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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