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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A tart lemon custard filling baked in a pie crust and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, 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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Grate the lemon zest, avoiding the white part, and squeeze out the juice.

  2. In a double boiler, combine the grated lemon, cornstarch, sugar, butter, and hot water. Cook until well combined.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, then stir in the egg yolks.

Bake the crust and fill

  1. Pre-bake the pie crust until golden.

  2. Pour the lemon filling into the crust.

Top and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add a little powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue on top of the pie.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for a few minutes 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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  2. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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 lemon filling as it heats, giving it a sliceable set.
Lemon
Supplies the zest and juice that give the filling its bright aroma and acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the filling.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the filling once they are stirred in.

The step that matters

Cool the filling slightly before adding the egg yolks. If the hot filling is hit with the yolks directly, they can scramble into lumps. Cooling it a little first lets the yolks blend in smoothly and thicken the custard evenly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Milletfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, butter, 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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