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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A custard pie with lemon zest and juice, topped with a browned egg white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a pie dish.

  3. Scald 1½ cups of milk in a saucepan.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix cornstarch, eggs, sugar, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

  2. Add the scalded milk to the mixture and cook until it thickens to a custard consistency.

Finish and frost

  1. Pour the filling into the baked pie crust.

  2. Whip the reserved egg whites and frost the pie, browning slightly in the oven.

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. 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. Egg + buttertop 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

Eggs
Egg proteins set as the custard cooks, and the reserved whites form the frosting.
Cornstarch
Starch swells in the hot milk mixture and thickens the filling into a custard.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds richness and creaminess.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Provides acidity and bright lemon aroma through its juice and rind.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until it thickens. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture is heated enough for its starch granules to swell and set. Stopping too early leaves a runny filling, while overcooking can cause the eggs to curdle or the starch to break down and thin.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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