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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked lemon custard filling in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter, sugar, and cornstarch together.

  2. Add the sweet milk and beaten egg yolks to the mixture.

  3. Grate the yellow zest from the lemon and add it for flavor.

  4. Squeeze the lemon juice and mix it in.

  5. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake with the bottom crust only.

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, beaten stiff and folded in, add lightness to the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid filling so it sets into a sliceable custard when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon
Supplies the zest for aroma and the juice for the tart, bright flavor.
Sweet milk
Provides liquid and richness that the cornstarch and eggs set into the custard.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that gives lightness; overmixing deflates them and makes the filling dense, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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