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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie made with corn starch, sugar, boiling water, butter, eggs, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix corn starch and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Add boiling water and boil for 10 minutes.

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

Finish and bake

  1. Pour filling into a pie crust or top with meringue and bake.

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. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  2. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 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

Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it boils, giving the pie a set, sliceable body.
Eggs
Add richness and help the filling set as it cooks and thickens.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the pie's flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the acidity of the lemon.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil the starch mixture for 10 minutes. Corn starch only thickens fully once its granules swell and gelatinize in boiling liquid. Undercooking leaves the filling thin and runny, so it may not set properly after cooling or baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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