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Dessert

Lemon Meringue Pie

A pie with lemon custard filling topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lemon Meringue 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar, then gradually mix in the lemon juice, grated peel, egg yolks, and arrowroot mixed with water.

  3. Pour the mixture into a prepared pie crust.

  4. Bake the pie until firm.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Whip the egg whites until soft peaks form.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and lemon juice to the whipped egg whites.

  3. Spread the meringue over the baked pie.

  4. Return the pie to the oven until the meringue is set and lightly browned.

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 + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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 and add richness as they set during baking.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the airy, stable structure of the meringue.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor in the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the filling so it sets firm when baked.
Lemon juice
Provides the acidity that gives the filling its bright, tart flavor.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites to soft peaks. Egg whites must be free of any fat or yolk and whipped gradually with sugar to form a stable foam. Under-whipped or greasy whites will weep or fail to hold the meringue's shape.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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