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Dessert

Butter Scotch Pie

A sweet pie with a butter, sugar, milk, egg yolk filling 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

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter and brown sugar together in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the milk, egg yolks, flour, and salt until smooth.

  3. Stir the milk mixture into the melted butter and sugar, and cook until thick.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool, then pour it into a pre-baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then spread over the top of the pie.

  2. Bake until the meringue is golden brown.

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 + 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling and add richness as they set with heat.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling becomes smooth and sliceable when cooled.
Brown sugar
Adds caramel-like sweetness and the characteristic butterscotch flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the caramelized sugar base.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam for the meringue topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook the milk mixture until thick. Egg yolks and flour must be heated enough to thicken the filling, but overheating can scramble the yolks and leave lumps. Cook gently while stirring so the custard sets smooth.

“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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