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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked pie with a lemon custard filling topped with sweetened whipped egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,344 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. 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.

Prepare the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the lemon rind, lemon juice, cold water, and sugar. Bring to a boil.

  2. Mix cornstarch with a little water, then add to the boiling mixture along with the beaten egg yolk.

  3. Pour the filling into the baked crust.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg white with sugar until stiff, then spread over the filling.

  2. Return the pie to the oven for a few minutes to brown the top.

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. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + coffeetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together578 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 lemon juice and water into a sliceable filling as it boils.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the filling, adding richness and body.
Egg white
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Supplies the acidity and aroma that define the filling's flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the cornstarch mixture. Cornstarch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, and it must be stirred into the hot liquid so it does not clump. Undercooked starch leaves the filling runny and gives a raw starchy taste.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, 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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