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Dessert

New Lemon Meringue Pie

A pie with a lemon custard filling topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

New Lemon Meringue Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Line a pie plate with the crust and bake until golden.

  3. Turn onto a flat plate to cool.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks until light.

  2. Add cold water, flour, sugar, lemon juice, grated rind, and salt. Stir until smooth.

  3. Place the mixture in a double boiler and cook until thickened.

  4. Cool and pour into the pie crust.

Make and bake the meringue

  1. In another bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 4 tablespoons of powdered sugar, whipping constantly.

  3. Fold in the remaining 3½ tablespoons of sugar and the lemon flavoring.

  4. Spread the meringue over the pie, mounding it in the center.

  5. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until the meringue is lightly browned.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Flour and egg 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
Thicken the filling as they set during cooking, giving it a rich, custard-like body.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the light, stable meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the lemon filling along with the egg yolks as it cooks.
Lemon
Provides the sharp acidity and bright aroma of the filling and flavoring.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened. The filling must be cooked long enough for the starch and egg yolks to thicken it fully; undercooked filling stays runny and will not hold a clean slice once cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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