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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a crust filled with lemon juice, rind, sugar, water, eggs, and frosted with beaten egg whites and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Stir together the juice and grated rind of 1 lemon, ¾ cup white sugar, and 1 cup water.

  2. Stir in 4 beaten eggs, reserving the whites of 2 for frosting.

  3. Fill the mixture into a pie crust and bake.

Frost and brown

  1. Beat the reserved egg whites to a stiff froth with 2 tablespoons powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the frosting evenly over the pie and return to the oven until slightly browned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lemon juice
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the filling.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it set with a smooth, soft texture.
Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken the filling as they cook, giving it structure when baked.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the frosting and dissolves into the egg whites to make them glossy and stable.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg white proteins trap air when beaten, so the whites must be whipped until stiff and kept free of yolk and grease. Under-beaten or greasy whites stay runny and slide off the filling instead of forming a stable topping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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