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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie baked in puff pastry crusts and topped with frosted egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix lemon juice, grated rind, sugar, water, and butter in a pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, then thicken with cornstarch and beaten egg yolks.

Bake and assemble

  1. Prepare two deep pie crusts and bake them.

  2. Fill the baked crusts with the lemon mixture.

  3. Beat the egg whites to make frosting, cover the top, and brown 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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  2. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 with heat, giving it a custard-like body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon mixture when heated, giving it a smooth, sliceable texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the frosting topping and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sourness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides the acidity and tart flavor that defines the filling.

The step that matters

Thicken with cornstarch and egg yolks. Adding the yolks to a hot mixture can scramble them, and cornstarch needs to reach a boil to thicken fully. Heat gently while stirring and keep it boiling briefly so the filling sets smoothly rather than staying thin or turning grainy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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