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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie baked in a double crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the water in a saucepan.

  2. Wet the cornstarch with a little cold water.

  3. Stir the wet cornstarch into the boiling water.

  4. Once it boils, pour the mixture over the sugar and butter.

  5. After it cools, add the egg and lemon juice and rind.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust.

  2. Cover with another crust.

  3. Bake until golden 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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, sliceable filling as it heats and gelatinises.
Egg
Adds richness and helps set the filling as it bakes.
Lemon
Provides the sharp acidity and aroma that define the pie's flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir the wet cornstarch into the boiling water. Cornstarch must be fully slurried in cold water first, then added to boiling liquid and stirred, so starch granules swell evenly and thicken without lumps. Adding dry or unmixed starch causes clumping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

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