Skip to main content
Dessert

Custaed for Lemon Meringue Pie

A lemon custard filling for a pie, made with lemon rind, juice, egg yolks, flour, sugar, salt or butter, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Custaed for Lemon Meringue Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated lemon rind and juice, egg yolks, flour, sugar, and salt or butter.

  2. Stir in the boiling water and mix until smooth.

  3. Steam the mixture until it thickens.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Whip the egg whites and spread them on top of the pie before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Lemon rind and juice
Provides the tart, acidic flavour that balances the sugar in the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set and add richness to the custard.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when cut.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Steam the mixture until it thickens. Egg yolks and flour thicken the filling only as the starch gelatinises and the yolk proteins set with heat. Stopping too early leaves a runny filling, while overcooking can make it grainy or cause it to weep.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes