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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the lemon filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks of 4 eggs, ⅔ cup sugar, grated rind, and juice of 1 lemon until creamy.

  2. Place the bowl in a pan of hot water and cook until thick.

  3. Beat the whites of 2 eggs to stiff peaks and gently stir into the lemon mixture.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake in a very hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for a few minutes.

  2. To make the meringue, beat the whites of 2 eggs to stiff peaks, then add 1 tablespoon powdered sugar and a little lemon juice.

  3. Spread the meringue over the top of the pie, return to the oven, and brown slightly.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the lemon filling as they cook and give it a rich, custardy body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp, acidic flavour that defines the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to give the filling lightness and form the airy meringue topping.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the meringue, adding sweetness and helping it hold its stiff structure.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thick. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. If the mixture is undercooked it stays runny, and if overheated the yolks can scramble and turn grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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