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Dessert

Lemon Cream Pie

A pie made with lemon zest, juice, sugar, eggs, cornstarch, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the lemon peel, avoiding the bitter white part.

  2. Combine the grated peel with sugar and squeeze the lemon juice over it.

Make the filling

  1. Add the beaten egg yolks and cornstarch dissolved in a little water; mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a saucepan with boiling water.

  3. Stir constantly to prevent burning; once it boils, remove from heat.

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).

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the filling and add richness as they set with heat.
Cornstarch
Starch thickens the filling into a smooth, sliceable cream when heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemons
Juice provides sourness and the grated peel adds aromatic lemon flavor.

The step that matters

Stir constantly once the mixture is in the saucepan. The starch and egg yolks can scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred, and the thickening starch needs even heat to set smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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