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Dessert

Delicious Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie topped with a light meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Delicious Lemon 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. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs until light.

  3. Mix 2 tablespoons of corn starch in a little milk.

  4. Add 1 cup of sugar, the juice of 1 lemon, and a little grated peel.

  5. Stir in 1 large cup of milk and beat all together.

  6. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the egg whites and spread evenly over the pie.

  3. Return the pie to the oven until the meringue is slightly 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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
Enrich the filling and help it thicken into a rich custard when heated.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk and lemon mixture as it heats, giving the filling a sliceable body.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the meringue its light, airy structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the filling and balances its sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, in the meringue, helps stabilize the whipped whites.
Milk
Provides moisture and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake the filling until set. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture is heated enough for its starch granules to swell. Underbaked filling stays loose and runs when sliced.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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