Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard filling topped with meringue baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine lemon juice, lemon rind, sugar, sweet milk, egg yolks, cornstarch, and butter.

  2. Cook over medium heat until thickened.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pre-baked pie crust.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. In a bowl, beat egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie filling.

  3. Return the pie to a 350°F (175°C) oven until the meringue is a delicate 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. 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

Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the filling, adding richness and a smooth set.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon filling as it cooks, giving it a sliceable body.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the light, airy meringue topping.
Lemon juice
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilises the whipped egg white meringue.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a simmer and is stirred, so undercooked filling stays runny and may not slice cleanly once cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes