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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon pie with a creamy filling and meringue topping baked in a pre-baked crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

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.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix corn starch with a little cold water until smooth.

  2. In a saucepan, bring ¾ cup boiling water to a boil, then stir in the corn starch mixture and cook for 15 minutes in a double boiler.

  3. Add butter, milk, sugar, beaten egg yolks (with a spoonful of cold milk), lemon juice, and grated lemon rind to the mixture.

  4. Pour the cooked mixture into a pre-baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff, gradually adding 2 tablespoons of sugar, then spread over the pie.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the top is 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the lemon filling as it cooks, giving it a sliceable, custard-like body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the filling, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping and browns in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites in the meringue.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a smoother filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thick. Corn starch only thickens fully when the mixture is cooked long enough to gelatinise the starch. Undercooked filling stays runny and may weep once cut. Stirring keeps it smooth and prevents lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, sugar, butter, milk, 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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