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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a meringue topping made from eggs, sugar, flour, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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. Beat the 4 whole eggs and 4 yolks together until light.

  2. Add the sugar and flour to the eggs.

  3. Scrape the inside of the lemons into the water.

  4. Mix and strain the lemon mixture into the eggs.

  5. Beat the mixture until light.

  6. Cook the mixture in a thick tin or kettle, stirring constantly to prevent scorching, until very cold.

Bake the crusts

  1. Bake 2 pie crusts.

  2. Let the crusts cool to prevent heaviness.

Assemble and finish

  1. Pour the lemon mixture into the cooled crusts.

  2. Make a meringue with the reserved egg whites.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pies.

  4. Bake in the oven until the meringue is slightly 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Whole eggs and yolks thicken the filling, and the reserved whites make the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemons
Provide the sour flavour and aroma that define the pie.
Flour
Helps thicken the filling so it holds its body when cut.

The step that matters

Cook the filling while stirring constantly. The egg and starch mixture can scorch on the bottom of a pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the filling smooth as it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour. 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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