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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A pie made with boiled lemon slices in a sugar syrup, layered between pie paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons

  1. Boil the lemons in water until a straw can penetrate the skin.

  2. Remove the lemons.

  3. Chop the lemons finely.

  4. Take out the seeds.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and water.

  2. Boil the mixture.

  3. Skim the mixture until it forms a nice syrup.

  4. Add the chopped lemons to the syrup.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover a shallow plate with pie paste.

  2. Add the lemon mixture to the plate.

  3. Spread the mixture nearly to the edge.

  4. Cover with another layer of pie paste.

  5. Cut a slit in the center.

  6. 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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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

Lemons
Provide the main flavor, acidity and aromatic peel that give the filling its character.
Light brown sugar
Sweetens the filling and, boiled with water, forms a syrup that softens the chopped lemon.
Pie paste
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and holds it during baking.

The step that matters

Boil the lemons until a straw can penetrate the skin. The peel must soften fully so it becomes tender rather than tough and bitter. Pectin and cell walls break down with heat, so the lemon cooks through and blends into the syrup. Stopping too early leaves chewy, bitter pieces.

“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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