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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A baked lemon custard pie topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, mix the sugar, lemon juice, and boiling water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. In a small bowl, stir the flour into a little water until smooth.

  4. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  5. Stir the egg yolk mixture into the boiling mixture and cook until thick.

Bake the crust and fill

  1. Bake the pie crust until light brown.

  2. Pour the lemon filling into the crust.

Make and brown the meringue

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 1 tablespoon of sugar to the whites.

  3. Spread the meringue over the filling.

  4. Return the pie to the oven.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sourness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity and bright flavor that defines the pie.
Flour
Its starch swells when heated, thickening the filling so it can be sliced.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling, and whipped whites form the airy structure of the meringue.

The step that matters

Cooking the thickened filling. The starch and egg yolks must cook fully in the boiling mixture to set the filling. Undercooked starch leaves it thin and runny, while overheated yolks can curdle.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, 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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