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Dessert

Lemon Cake Pie

A lemon-flavored cake pie made with sugar, butter, eggs, milk, flour, and lemon juice and rind, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Cake Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Blend together the sugar and butter.

  2. Stir in the egg yolks, milk, flour, and lemon juice and rind.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until the top is like sponge cake and the bottom is custard.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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 whites
Whipped stiff and folded in, they lighten the batter and help the top rise into a sponge-like layer.
Egg yolks
They enrich the filling and help set the bottom into a custard.
Flour
Gives the batter some body so the filling holds its structure while baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that gives the bottom layer its custard texture.
Lemon juice and rind
Provide acidity and bright lemon aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps tenderize the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold air that makes the top light. Overmixing or deflating them during folding makes the cake layer dense instead of sponge-like, so fold gently.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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