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Lemon Custard Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Custard Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the sugar and egg yolks together until well combined.

  3. Add the juice and rind of the lemon to the mixture.

  4. Gradually add the flour to the milk while stirring continuously. Pour the milk mixture through a sieve into the egg and sugar mixture.

  5. Line a deep pie plate with puff pastry and pour in the filling.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Bake for 30 minutes.

  2. While baking, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add the powdered sugar while continuing to beat until stiff and glossy.

  3. Spread the meringue over the top of the pie and return to the oven to 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Yolks thicken the filling as they set, and whites whip into the stiff meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites in the meringue.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that sets with the egg yolks and flour into a creamy custard.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling holds its body when cooked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the filling its tart flavour and bright character.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff and glossy. Whites under-beaten or greasy will not hold stiff peaks, so the meringue weeps or collapses. Adding sugar gradually helps the foam stay stable and glossy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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