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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A tart pastry filled with lemon custard and topped with meringue.

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 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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, rub together the butter and flour until well combined.

  3. Scald the milk and pour it over the butter and flour mixture; let it cool.

  4. In another bowl, mix the egg yolks with the lemon zest and juice; sweeten to taste.

  5. Combine the cooled milk mixture with the egg yolk mixture.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust and bake until nearly set.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie and return to the oven to brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling into a custard, and whipped whites form the airy meringue topping.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the mixture a tender, smooth body.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milk mixture so the filling holds its shape when cut.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, setting with the eggs as it bakes.
Lemons
Juice adds sharp acidity that balances sweetness, and zest adds aroma.

The step that matters

Bake the filling until nearly set. Egg-thickened custard keeps setting as it cools, so over-baking can make it grainy or weepy. Pulling it while still slightly jiggly gives a smooth filling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, flour, 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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