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Dessert

Lemon Custard Pie

A custard pie flavored with lemon, topped with a frothy egg white meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Custard 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 custard

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

  2. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs with ½ cup sugar until smooth.

  3. Add 1 cup of milk and lemon flavoring, then mix well.

  4. Prepare a pie crust and pour the mixture into it.

Bake and top

  1. Bake the pie until set.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the whites of 3 eggs until frothy.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar and mix until combined.

  4. Once the pie is baked, spread the egg white mixture on top and bake again until 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 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 as they set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, sliceable body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the tartness of the lemon flavoring.
Milk
Adds liquid and moisture that the egg yolks set into a creamy filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms a light topping and browns in the second bake.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the egg white topping and helps it stay smooth and stable.
Lemon flavoring
Provides the lemon aroma and flavor that defines the custard.

The step that matters

Bake the pie until set. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overbaking pushes them too far, so the custard can curdle, turn grainy, or weep liquid.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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