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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A custard lemon pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little cold milk and stir it into the boiling milk.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar and add to the mixture along with the butter.

  4. Once cooled, stir in the grated lemon rind and juice, reserving 1 tablespoon for the meringue.

  5. Pour the mixture into two pie pans and bake.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. For the meringue, beat the egg whites and gradually add ½ cup sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue on the pies and return to the oven to brown.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites whip into the meringue's airy structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that cornstarch thickens.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a sliceable custard when heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, added gradually, stabilizes the meringue foam.
Lemon juice
Provides the acidity that gives the filling its tart, bright flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier custard texture.

The step that matters

Beating the meringue to stiff peaks. Sugar added gradually dissolves into the whipped whites and stabilizes the foam. Any trace of fat or yolk, or under-beaten whites, can stop it reaching stiff peaks or cause it to weep and collapse in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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