Skip to main content
Dessert

Butter Scotch Pie

A sweet pie with a buttery filling made from egg yolk, flour, milk, butter, brown sugar, and topped with nuts and whipped egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Make the filling

  1. Mix the egg yolk, flour, and 1 cup of milk in a bowl until well combined.

  2. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  3. Add the brown sugar and 4 tablespoons of milk to the melted butter.

  4. Let the mixture cool for 5 minutes.

  5. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet.

  6. Cook the mixture slowly until thickened.

  7. Pour the filling into the baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Chop or grind the fine nuts.

  2. Sprinkle the nuts on top of the pie.

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

  4. Spread the whipped egg white on top of the pie.

  5. Brown the pie in the oven until the topping is 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + nutstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 yolk
Thickens the filling as it cooks and adds richness to the custard.
Flour
Thickens the custard so it sets into a sliceable filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and keeps the filling moist.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the caramel-style base.
Brown sugar
Provides the sweetness and the characteristic butterscotch flavour.
Egg white
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture slowly until thickened. Egg yolk and flour thicken the filling only as the starch swells and the yolk sets gently. Heating too fast can scorch the sugars or curdle the yolk, leaving a lumpy or grainy custard.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes