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Dessert

Lemon Meringue

A pastry shell filled with lemon custard and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Meringue

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the pastry

  1. For the pastry, mix flour, salt, and lard in a bowl.

  2. Moisten the mixture with ice water and form a dough.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine egg yolks, sugar, melted butter, flour, boiling water, lemon juice, and lemon rind in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring until it thickens slightly.

  3. Pour the filling into the prepared pastry.

Top and bake

  1. For the icing, beat the egg whites until light and add sugar to sweeten, along with a little lemon juice.

  2. Spread the icing over the filling and bake in a hot oven (400°F or 200°C) until 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. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 filling as they set, giving it a rich, custard-like body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a light foam that forms the meringue topping and sets when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and icing and helps the meringue stay stable.
Flour
Thickens the filling as it cooks with the boiling water.
Lard
Shortens the pastry, keeping it tender and flaky.
Lemon juice and rind
Add the tart, aromatic flavour that defines the pie.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until it thickens. Flour starch thickens only when heated with liquid, and the egg yolks can scramble if the mixture overheats. Stir steadily over medium heat until it just thickens slightly, so the filling sets smooth and the pie slices cleanly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, sugar, butter, lemon. 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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