Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon and orange custard baked over a bread crumb base.

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

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Pour boiling water over the bread crumbs.

  2. Add the lemon and orange juice, grated lemon rind, egg yolks, and sugar.

  3. Cook the mixture slowly for a few minutes.

  4. Thicken with the flour stirred to a paste.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake the mixture until set.

  2. Cover with beaten egg whites mixed with a little sugar.

  3. Return to the oven and brown slightly.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Enrich the filling and help it thicken and set when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the liquid and give the filling body.
Flour
Thickens the cooked filling so it holds its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharp citrus juice.
Lemon juice and rind
Provide acidity and aroma that define the pie's flavour.
Egg whites
Whip into a topping that browns lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook the filling slowly. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if heated too fast. Gentle heat lets them thicken the filling smoothly while the flour sets it.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

More lemon pie recipes

Filling 23Apple 11Raisin 4 See all 602 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes