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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked lemon custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix flour and sugar in a bowl, then gradually stir in boiling water, cooking for 2 minutes while stirring constantly.

  2. Remove from heat and add butter, egg yolk, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

Bake and top

  1. Line a pie pan with pastry, pour in the cooled mixture, and bake until the pastry is done.

  2. Cool slightly, then prepare the meringue by beating egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar while continuing to beat, then mix in vanilla.

  4. Spread meringue over the pie and 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolk
Thickens the lemon filling and adds richness when cooked with the starch.
Flour
Thickens the boiling water into a stable, sliceable custard-like filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the airy, stable meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and aroma that define the filling's tart flavour.

The step that matters

Beating the meringue until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold firm peaks, and sugar added gradually, so the foam is stable and does not weep or collapse in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg, butter, vanilla. 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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