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Dessert

Butter-scotch Pie

A sweet pie made with brown sugar, butter, milk, eggs, flour, vanilla, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Butter-scotch Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cream the brown sugar with the butter.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Add the flour mixed with a little milk.

  4. Add enough milk to make 2 full cups.

  5. Heat the milk, sugar, and butter mixture in a double boiler, stirring constantly until smooth.

  6. Whip in the egg yolks once the mixture thickens.

  7. Remove from heat.

  8. Add vanilla.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour into a pre-baked pie crust.

  2. Cover with meringue made from beaten egg whites and powdered sugar.

  3. Brown lightly in the 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard filling, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Brown sugar
Provides the caramel-like butterscotch sweetness and flavor of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets into a sliceable custard.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the butterscotch flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens with heat.

The step that matters

Whip in the egg yolks once the mixture thickens. Adding yolks to a very hot mixture can scramble them. Adding them after the filling has thickened and while stirring constantly helps keep the custard smooth.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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

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