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Dessert

Butter Scotch Pie

A custard pie with butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, baked and 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 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.

Make the custard

  1. Combine brown sugar, milk, butter, flour, and egg yolks in a double boiler.

  2. Cook until thick.

  3. Bake the pie crust separately.

  4. Pour the custard into the baked crust.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt and baking powder until stiff.

  2. Gradually add sugar while beating, then spread over the custard.

  3. Brown the meringue in a 350°F (175°C) 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. Flour + eggtop 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 custard and add richness and colour to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk and sugar mixture so the custard sets firm when cooked.
Brown sugar
Gives the custard its characteristic butterscotch sweetness and caramel flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable meringue that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth custard texture and buttery flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thick. Egg yolks and flour thicken only when the custard is heated enough, but overheating can curdle the eggs. Cook gently in the double boiler and stop once it is thick, so the filling sets smooth rather than grainy or lumpy.

“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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