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Dessert

Filling for Lemon Pie

A lemon custard filling for 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 ↓

Filling for Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, water, sugar, and butter.

  2. Heat the mixture until it boils.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour, stirring well.

Bake the pie

  1. Pre-bake the pie crust until golden.

  2. Pour the filling into the crust and bake for 5 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add sugar and vanilla.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 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

Lemons
Provide the sharp acidity and lemon aroma that define the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps sweeten and stabilise the meringue.
Flour
Thickens the lemon mixture so it sets into a sliceable filling.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling, and whites whipped into meringue give a light, airy topping.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour, stirring well. Flour thickens only when the mixture is hot and stirred evenly; unstirred starch can clump or leave the filling lumpy and under-set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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