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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue, baked in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Mix and sift cornstarch, flour, sugar, and salt.

  2. Gradually add boiling water while stirring constantly.

  3. Cook over hot water until the mixture thickens.

  4. Remove from heat; add butter, slightly beaten egg yolks, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.

Bake and top

  1. Line a pie pan with pastry; brush with egg white.

  2. Pour in the slightly cooled mixture and bake until the pastry is well browned.

  3. Remove from oven, cool slightly, and spread with meringue.

  4. Return to oven to bake and brown the meringue.

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. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats with the boiling water.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a rich, smooth custard.
Lemon juice
Adds the tart acidity that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture in the filling.
Flour
Adds body to the filling alongside the cornstarch for a firmer set.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until it thickens. Cornstarch thickens only when heated to a boil in liquid, so the mixture must be cooked until it is visibly thick. Adding the egg yolks to a very hot mixture without care can scramble them, so the filling should be cooled slightly before the yolks are stirred in.](https://)

Swap the lemon

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

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

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