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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a meringue topping made from egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, butter, flour, boiling water, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, butter, flour, and boiling water.

  2. Stir the mixture until well combined.

  3. Pour the filling into a pre-baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and spread them over the filling.

  2. Brown the meringue in a preheated oven.

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 + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set with heat, giving it a rich, custardy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the beaten egg white meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds the tart acidity that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling and helps it hold its shape when cut.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the meringue topping, which browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks to trap air and form a stable foam. Under-whipped whites collapse or weep, and the meringue will not hold its height.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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