Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked lemon custard pie topped with stiff‑egg‑white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Lemon 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.

Make the filling

  1. Grate the peel of the lemon, avoiding the white pith.

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated lemon peel with the egg yolks, sugar, and corn starch. Beat thoroughly.

  3. Add the sweet milk to the mixture and combine well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread the frosting over the pie.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set and add richness to the custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid filling so it sets firmly when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Its peel adds bright lemon aroma and flavor to the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form the airy frosting topping.

The step that matters

Baking the filling until set. Underbaking leaves the egg and starch filling runny, while overbaking can make the egg proteins curdle and weep. Watch for a set center that still jiggles slightly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More lemon pie recipes

Filling 23Apple 11Raisin 4 See all 602 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipes