lambda magic

(define (mcons x y)
  (lambda (p)
    (cond ((= p 1) x)
          ((= p 2) y))))

(define (mcar x) (x 1))

(define (mcdr x) (x 2))

; Using above procedures
(define a (mcons 11 33))
(mcar a)
(mcdr a)

Some excerpts from SICP on above way of implementation.

We never actually said what a pair was, only that the language supplied procedures cons, car, and cdr for operating on pairs. But the only thing we need to know about these three operations is that if we glue two objects together using cons we can retrieve the objects using car and cdr. That is, the operations satisfy the condition that, for any objects x and y, if z is (cons x y) then (car z) is x and (cdr z) is y. Indeed, we mentioned that these three procedures are included as primitives in our
language. However, any triple of procedures that satisfies the above condition can be used as the basis for implementing pairs. This point is illustrated strikingly by the fact that we could implement cons, car, and cdr without using any data structures at all but only using procedures.

This procedural implementation of pairs is a valid implementation, and if we access pairs using only cons, car, and cdr we cannot distinguish this implementation from one that uses ``real'' data structures.

The point of exhibiting the procedural representation of pairs is not that our language works this way (Scheme, and Lisp systems in general, implement pairs directly, for efficiency reasons) but that it could work this way.

This example also demonstrates that the ability to manipulate procedures as objects automatically provides the ability to represent compound data. This may seem a curiosity now, but procedural representations of data will play a central role in our programming repertoire. This style of programming is often called message passing.