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Dessert

Novelty Lemon Pie

A lemon custard pie made with eggs, sugar, lemon rind, juice, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Novelty 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. Beat the egg yolks until light, then add lemon juice and mix well.

  2. Add sugar and grated lemon rind to the mixture.

  3. Place the mixture in a rounded bottom enamel bowl set in a pan of boiling water.

  4. Keep the water boiling and whip the mixture with a wire egg beater until thick and creamy.

  5. Remove the pan from heat but let the bowl stand in the hot water.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff, dry consistency and fold in the remaining ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Divide the egg white mixture in half; fold one half into the cooked mixture and pour into a baked pie shell.

  3. Add lemon extract to the remaining half of the egg white mixture and spread over the top of the pie.

  4. Set the pie in the oven at 350°F (175°C) to brown lightly for about 12 minutes.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Yolks thicken the filling as they cook, and whites whip into a stiff, airy meringue.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Lemon juice
Adds the sharp acidity that gives the filling its tang.
Grated lemon rind
Adds aroma from the fragrant oils in the peel.

The step that matters

Whipping the filling over boiling water. Egg yolks thicken gently as their proteins set with heat. If the mixture is too cool it stays thin, and if it overheats it can curdle and turn grainy, so keep the heat steady while whipping until thick and creamy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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