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Dessert

Marlborough Pie

A baked pie made from melted butter, eggs, and lemon, with optional wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Marlborough Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix melted butter, eggs, lemon juice, lemon rind, and wine or brandy if using.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  3. Bake until set and lightly browned.

Serve

  1. Serve warm.

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 + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Eggs
Set the filling into a custard-like structure as they cook.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the rich filling.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oil that gives the filling its fresh lemon flavour.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly browned. Eggs keep setting as they cool, so pulling the pie when the centre just jiggles avoids a rubbery or weeping filling. Overbaking causes the eggs to curdle and separate.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Plumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, wine. 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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