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Butter Scotch Filling

A sweet butter and sugar filling thickened with milk and eggs, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl, then mix in the brown sugar and flour.

  2. Pour the scalded milk over the mixture and transfer to a double boiler.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks and stir continuously until thickened.

  4. Add the salt.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the brown sugar and a speck of salt to the egg whites.

  3. Place the meringue in the oven for 5 minutes to 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. Flour + milktop 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, soft body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel-like flavour to the filling and meringue.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling sets into a spoonable custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they heat and add richness and colour.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to form the meringue, giving light structure and volume.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks in continuously until thickened. Egg yolks can scramble if they get too hot or are left unstirred over heat. Constant stirring over the double boiler keeps the proteins from clumping and lets the custard thicken smoothly.

“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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