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Dessert

Lemon Cream Pie

A lemon custard filling baked in a pie crust, topped with frothy whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  2. Add lemon juice, sugar, milk, butter, and cornstarch to the yolks.

  3. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  4. Let it cool, then pour into the baked pie crust.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Add powdered sugar to the beaten egg whites.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture on top.

  4. Brown the mixture.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites form the light topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard as it boils, giving it a sliceable body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard and adds richness.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whites, sweetening and stabilizing the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil, and egg yolks can scramble if overheated. Stir constantly and keep the heat controlled so the custard turns thick and smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, 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.

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