Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked lemon custard topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the cornstarch with a little of the milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk until boiling, then stir in the cornstarch mixture and boil for 1 minute.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the egg yolks, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and the lemon juice and rind. Beat well.

  4. Line a deep pie plate with pastry and fill it with the lemon mixture.

  5. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 30 minutes.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, gradually adding the remaining sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and brown slowly.

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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling and enrich it, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture so the lemon filling sets and holds its shape when cut.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, whipped with the whites, stabilizes the meringue.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the filling.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the filling, thickened by the cornstarch as it heats.

The step that matters

Cool the filling before adding the yolks. Adding yolks to a very hot starch mixture can scramble them and make the filling grainy. Cooling it first lets the yolks blend smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes