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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie made with lemon pulp, sugar, eggs, flour, hot water, butter, and a sugared egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 pulp and some of the rind of the lemons.

  2. Beat the sugar and yolks of the eggs well, then add to the lemon mixture.

  3. Stir in the flour, hot water, and butter.

Make the icing and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites for the icing, then gradually add 5 tablespoons of sugar to the beaten egg whites.

  2. After baking the pie, spread the icing on top.

  3. Return the pie to the oven until lightly browned.

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. Egg + flourtop 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

Lemons
Provide acidity and fragrant oil from the rind that flavour the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the beaten egg white icing.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling, and whites whip into the icing that sets on top.
Flour
Thickens the lemon mixture so it holds its body when cut.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Gradually add the sugar to the egg whites. Adding sugar slowly while beating lets it dissolve and strengthens the foam. Adding it all at once can leave the whites loose and grainy, so the icing may not hold its peaks or brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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