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Dessert

Lemon Cream Pie

A custard pie with lemon flavor 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 Cream 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. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and add the sugar, milk, and butter. Mix well.

  3. Extract the juice of the lemon and grate the rind. Add both to the mixture.

  4. Thicken the mixture with cornstarch and pour it into a pie crust.

  5. Bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and bake until lightly browned.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness and a smooth, custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping and browns in the oven.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon filling so it sets firmly when cooled.
Lemon
Provides the sharp acidity and bright aroma that define the pie.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer filling texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be fully mixed and heated until the filling thickens; if it is undercooked, the starch will not set and the filling will stay runny after cooling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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