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Dessert

Lemon Pie

A lemon custard filling baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Stir corn starch into a paste with a little cold water.

  2. Add the paste to the boiling water in a saucepan over heat.

  3. Add butter, sugar, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind; stir until clear and thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and add the egg.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the pie crust until done, then pour the mixture into the crust.

  2. Return to the oven for 5 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 + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Corn starch
Thickens the filling as its starch swells and gels in hot liquid.
Egg
Enriches the filling and helps it set into a firm, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice and rind
Provide the sharp acidity and bright lemon aroma that define the pie.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth mouthfeel in the filling.

The step that matters

Add the egg off the heat. Egg proteins set and can scramble at high temperature. Adding the egg after removing the pan from heat lets it blend in smoothly and thicken gently without curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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