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Lemon Pie with One Crust

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue baked until brown.

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 with One Crust

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Combine the whole egg, egg yolks, ¾ cup sugar, cornstarch, grated lemon, and boiling water in a double boiler.

  2. Cook until the mixture thickens.

  3. Pour the thickened mixture into the pie shell.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Gradually add 4 tablespoons of sugar to the egg whites.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie filling.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until 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. 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
Add richness and help thicken the lemon filling as it cooks.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling by swelling with heat as it cooks.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, stable meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and stabilizes the whipped egg white meringue.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and aroma that flavor the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until it thickens. Cornstarch and egg need enough heat to thicken fully, but overcooking can curdle the eggs or leave the filling loose once cooled. Stop when it is thick and smooth.

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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