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Dessert

Erosted Lemon Pie

A lemon filling cooked until thick, topped with whipped egg whites and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Erosted Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine the grated rind and juice of the lemon, egg yolks, flour, butter, and sugar in a bowl and mix well.

  2. Add the boiling water.

  3. Cook until thick.

Frost and finish

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add a little powdered sugar to the egg whites.

  3. Spread the whipped egg whites over the lemon mixture to frost.

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the frosting on top.
Flour
Thickens the lemon mixture so it sets as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.
Lemon
Provides the tart flavour and aroma from its rind and juice.

The step that matters

Cook until thick. The filling thickens as starch granules swell in boiling liquid. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while overcooking can make the egg yolks scramble or the starch break down.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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