Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Cream Pie

A custard pie with lemon flavor topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Cream Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs.

  2. Beat the yolks, then add sugar, flour, lemon juice, lemon rind, and boiling water.

  3. Cook in a double boiler until it thickens, then fold in half of the beaten egg whites.

  4. Continue cooking until desired thickness is reached.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill a baked pie shell with the custard and set aside.

  2. For the meringue, beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding icing sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the custard and brown slightly in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

  4. Ensure all ingredients are cold before starting.

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. Flour + lemontop 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
Yolks thicken the custard, and whites build the foam that forms the meringue.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps steady the beaten egg whites.
Flour
Thickens the custard so it sets into a spoonable filling.
Lemons
Juice gives sharp acidity, and the rind adds fragrant lemon oils.
Icing sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilise the beaten egg whites.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard in a double boiler. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, and too much heat can make them curdle or scramble. Gentle, steady heat in a double boiler, with constant stirring, keeps the custard smooth while 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes