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Dessert

Lemon Meringue

A pie with a lemon custard filling topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Lemon Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a pint measure, combine grated lemon, sugar, egg yolks, and corn starch.

  2. Fill the measure with milk and mix well.

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

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and lightly brown 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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard filling and add richness as they set.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid filling so it sets when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides acidity and aroma that flavour the filling.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Baking the filling until set. Underbaked filling stays runny and will weep or soften the crust, while overbaking can make egg-thickened custard grainy or cause it to weep. Watching for a firm set matters.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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