Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato Starch Lemon Pie

A lemon pie thickened with potato starch, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potato Starch Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix potato starch and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add boiling water, stirring constantly until thickened, about 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in butter, egg yolks, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pre-cooked pie crust.

Top and brown

  1. Top with meringue made from the egg whites.

  2. Return to the oven to 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. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potato starch
Thickens the filling into a smooth, sliceable custard as it heats in the boiling water.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the filling once it is combined with the hot starch mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps hold moisture in the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the boiling water into the starch and sugar. Starch only thickens properly when it is stirred constantly while hot. Stopping or adding the water too fast can leave lumps or a thin filling that does not set firmly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon, 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.

More lemon pie recipes

Filling 23Apple 11Raisin 4 See all 602 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes