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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked pie with a lemon custard filling made from cornstarch, eggs, sugar, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Dissolve cornstarch in a little cold water.

  2. Stir the dissolved cornstarch into boiling water.

  3. Add beaten eggs, sugar, grated lemon, lemon juice, and butter to the mixture.

  4. Pour the filling into a pie crust and bake.

Top and serve

  1. Beat the egg white and mix with sugar.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture 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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  2. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling water into a smooth, sliceable custard filling.
Eggs
Add richness and help the filling set as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the pie's flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, rounder texture in the filling.
Egg white
Forms a light, sweet meringue topping once beaten with sugar.

The step that matters

Stir the dissolved cornstarch into boiling water. Cornstarch only thickens fully when it is heated while stirred, so adding it to boiling water and stirring steadily prevents lumps and gives an even, smooth filling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, 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.

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