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Dessert

Butter Scotch Pie

A sweet pie with a butter and brown sugar filling thickened with cornstarch and eggs, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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.

Make the custard

  1. Combine brown sugar, butter, milk, and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix cornstarch with egg yolks, then gradually add to the boiling mixture, stirring constantly until thickened.

  3. Pour the filling into pie crusts.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and spread over the filling.

  2. Brown the meringue in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Brown sugar
Provides the sweetness and the caramel-like butterscotch flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling liquid into a smooth, sliceable filling.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff meringue that browns on top.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornstarch and yolk mixture into the boiling liquid. Cornstarch needs to reach a boil while being stirred constantly, or it can clump and leave lumps. Adding the yolk mixture gradually keeps the eggs from scrambling while the filling thickens evenly.

“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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