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Dessert

Butterscotch Pie

A sweet pie with a buttery, sugared filling thickened with corn starch and topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Butterscotch Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a double boiler, combine sweet milk, brown sugar, and butter.

  2. Whisk in the corn starch until smooth.

  3. Cook the mixture, stirring frequently, until it thickens.

  4. Separate the egg yolks from the whites; add yolks to the mixture and stir well.

Assemble and top

  1. Pour the filling into a pie crust and let it cool.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and use them to frost the pie.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set, adding richness and body to the custard.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and the caramel-like flavour that gives butterscotch its character.
Butter
Adds fat and rich butterscotch flavour to the filling.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into the custard.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until it thickens. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a simmer and is stirred constantly, so stopping early leaves a thin filling. Stirring also prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan.

“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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