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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine sugar, lemon juice, and rind in a bowl.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture.

  3. Beat the egg yolks well.

  4. Strain the yolks.

  5. Add the yolks and butter to the bowl.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  7. Mix cornstarch with a little cold water.

  8. Add the cornstarch mixture to the boiling mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a pie crust in a pie tin.

  2. Pour the custard into the crust.

  3. Make meringue from the egg whites.

  4. Cover the pie with the meringue.

  5. Brown the meringue slightly in the oven.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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).

Sugar and lemon 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 custard and add richness as they set with heat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling custard so it sets into a sliceable filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides the acidity and aroma that give the filling its flavour.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Add the cornstarch mixture to the boiling mixture. Cornstarch only thickens fully when it reaches a boil, and the mixture must be stirred while it does so to prevent lumps and scorching. Adding it to a mixture that is not boiling can leave the filling thin or starchy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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