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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie with a golden crust and browned egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine the grated rind and pulp of the lemons with boiling water and sugar in a pot and let it boil.

  2. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl and mix in the cornstarch.

  3. Add the egg yolk mixture to the boiling lemon mixture and let it scald.

Bake and serve

  1. Preheat the oven.

  2. Bake the pie crust until golden.

  3. Spread the beaten egg whites over the top of the pie after adding the custard.

  4. Return the pie to the oven.

  5. Brown the egg whites slightly.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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 custard and add richness and colour when cooked with the lemon mixture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon mixture as it heats, giving the custard a firm, sliceable set.
Egg whites
Form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the lemon custard and balances its sharp acidity.
Lemons
Provide the tart, aromatic flavour of the filling from the rind and pulp.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk mixture to the boiling lemon mixture. Egg yolks can curdle or turn grainy if added to very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring while adding them and letting the mixture scald, as the step says, helps the cornstarch thicken a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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