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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with pastry crust, lemon filling, and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a pie plate with the crust.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix lemon juice, flour, sugar, milk, and egg yolks.

  2. Pour the filling into the crust and bake until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add powdered sugar and salt.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and return to the oven to brown.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 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).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Lemons (juice)
Provides the tart, bright flavor that balances the sugar.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue stay glossy.
Milk
Adds moisture and body to the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as they set.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the browned meringue topping.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whipping traps air that gives the meringue its volume and light texture. Any grease or yolk in the bowl prevents the whites from reaching stiff peaks, so the topping can collapse or stay runny.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, 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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