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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie made with lemon zest, juice, sugar, butter, cornstarch, egg yolk, milk, and topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon filling

  1. Combine grated lemon and water in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

  4. Add sugar, lemon juice, and butter to the strained liquid.

  5. Boil for a few minutes.

  6. In a bowl, mix cornstarch and egg yolk with milk.

  7. Stir this mixture into the boiling lemon mixture until thickened.

Make the frosting

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form for the frosting.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a smooth, sliceable body.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps thicken the custard-style filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharp lemon flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, rounder texture in the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to create a light, airy frosting.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk mixture into the boiling lemon mixture. Cornstarch needs to reach a boil to fully thicken, but adding the egg yolk mixture too quickly or without stirring can cause lumps or curdling. Stir constantly while pouring in a thin stream.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk. 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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