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Dessert

Lemon Pie. Best Hotel Kind.

A lemon custard pie made with sugar, lemon rind, juice, water or milk, corn starch, egg yolks, and butter, baked in puff pastry.

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. Best Hotel Kind.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine sugar and grated lemon rinds in a saucepan.

  2. Squeeze in lemon juice, removing any seeds.

  3. Add water or milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Mix corn starch with a little cold water. Pour the mixture into the boiling syrup.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Stir in the slightly beaten yolks and butter without cooking them.

Assemble and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into pie pans lined with thin puff pastry.

  2. Sift powdered sugar over the pies when done, or top with meringue made from egg whites and sugar.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Lemon + corntop 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 filling as it heats, giving it a set, sliceable body.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and help thicken the custard once gently combined.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemons
Provide the sour citrus flavour and aroma from juice and rind.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel in the filling.

The step that matters

Stir in the yolks without cooking them. Egg yolks can scramble if they meet very hot liquid. Removing the pan from the heat before adding them lets them thicken the filling gently and keeps it smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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