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Dessert

Butter Scotch Pie

A sweet pie with a butter and sugar filling baked in a pie shell and topped with meringue.

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 ↓

Butter Scotch 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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Add the brown sugar, flour, and a little cold milk.

  4. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until thick.

  5. Add a pinch of salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Bake a pie shell as you would for a lemon cream pie.

  2. Pour the thick mixture into the baked shell.

  3. Beat the egg whites with a little sugar until stiff.

  4. Spread the meringue on top.

  5. Brown the meringue slightly in the oven.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 filling, and whites whip into the meringue topping.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and the caramel-like butterscotch flavor to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets firm when cooked and cooled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for flavor and a smooth texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. Egg yolks and flour thicken the filling as it heats, but overheating can scramble the eggs and make the custard grainy. Cooking gently in a double boiler and stirring keeps it smooth before it is poured into the shell.

“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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