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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A sweet pie with lemon rind, sugar, raisins, and butter filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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. In a saucepan, combine the grated lemon rind, sugar, flour, and butter.

  2. Cook over medium heat until thick, then stir in the raisins.

Bake and assemble

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

  2. Bake the pie pastry until golden brown.

  3. Pour the filling into the baked pastry.

  4. Roll out a thin layer of pastry for the top and place it over the filling.

Alternative

  1. Alternatively, you can make a roll instead of a pie and serve with lemon sauce.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Lemon rind
Adds bright lemon aroma and sharp flavour to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it thicken as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets firm rather than runny.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the filling.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. Flour thickens only when it is heated enough to swell and gelatinise the starch. Stopping early leaves a runny filling that will not hold its shape once cut.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, 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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