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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a meringue topping made from lemon zest, juice, sugar, flour, eggs, butter, and vanilla.

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Grate the yellow rind of the lemon and squeeze the juice.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar, flour, and egg yolks until light.

  3. Add the boiling water and melted butter to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and vanilla extract.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the baked pie and return to the oven until golden brown.

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 yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as they set with heat.
Flour
Helps thicken the filling so it holds its shape when sliced.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form the airy, stable meringue topping.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and aroma that define the filling's flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form. Egg whites must be fully whipped to hold air; any grease or yolk residue in the bowl will stop them reaching stiff peaks, and the meringue may then 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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