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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A fruit pie with lemon rind, sugar, butter, egg, cornstarch, and water filling, topped with a butter‑lard crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons and set aside the grated rind.

  2. In a saucepan, bring 2 cups of water to a boil.

  3. Wet the cornstarch with cold water, then stir the wet cornstarch into the boiling water.

  4. Add the grated lemon rind, sugar, melted butter, and beaten egg to the boiling mixture and stir well.

  5. Let the mixture stand to cool.

Make and fill the crust

  1. Prepare the crust by mixing 1 cup of flour, ¼ cup of butter, ¼ cup of lard, and ¼ cup of water until smooth.

  2. Bake the crust until golden.

  3. Fill the baked crust with the lemon mixture.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Eggs
Egg helps thicken the filling and gives it a rich, set texture.
Cornstarch
Starch thickens the boiling liquid into a smooth, sliceable filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharp acidity of the lemon.
Lemons
Rind and juice supply the main lemon aroma and tart flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the crust dough.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to both the filling and the crust, tenderising the crust.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch into the boiling water. Cornstarch must be fully wet first and added to boiling liquid so it gelatinises evenly; otherwise it clumps and the filling stays thin or lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, 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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