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Dessert

Butter Scotch Pie

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Butter Scotch Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine brown sugar, water, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until thickened, stirring to prevent burning.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in egg yolks, flour, milk, and vanilla until smooth.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, sweeten, and spread over the pie filling.

  2. Brown the meringue slightly in a preheated 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 caramel-like sweetness and flavor that defines butterscotch.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard filling as they set with heat, giving it body.
Flour
Thickens the filling and helps give it a smooth, sliceable structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds richness and moisture.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping, which browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened, stirring constantly. Sugar and butter can scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unattended. Stirring spreads the heat evenly, and the starch in the flour must be cooked to thicken the filling fully.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, flour, milk. 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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