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Dessert

Lemon Pie with Milk

A lemon-flavored pie made with milk, sugar, eggs, flour, butter, and topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 with Milk

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.

Prepare

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

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, stir together butter, sugar, and egg yolks until very light.

  2. Mix in the milk and flour until smooth.

  3. Add the lemon juice and beat all together.

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

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and spread on top of the pie.

  2. Return the pie to the oven and brown lightly.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Add richness and help thicken the custard as it sets.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the yolks become light and airy when creamed with butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor that balances the sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling sets smoothly.
Milk
Provides moisture and body to the custard filling.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff enough to hold their shape and spread over the pie. Under-whipped whites will slump and may not brown well, while the protein structure set by whipping gives the topping its light texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, flour, 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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