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Dessert

Butter Scotch Pie

A pie with a butter, sugar, flour, egg yolk, and milk filling flavored with vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. In a saucepan, boil the butter, brown sugar, and milk together.

  2. Dissolve the flour in 2 tablespoons of warm milk.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks to the flour mixture.

  4. Pour the boiling milk over it.

  5. Return the mixture to the saucepan and stir until it simmers.

  6. Flavor with vanilla.

Assemble the pie

  1. Pour the filling into a pre-baked pie shell.

  2. Cover the top with meringue.

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. Flour + buttertop 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

Brown sugar
Provides the sweetness and the caramel flavor that defines butterscotch.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the filling sets into a sliceable custard.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the filling as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the filling thickens in.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the saucepan and stir until it simmers. Egg yolks and flour thicken the filling only when it is heated enough, but overheating or scorching can curdle the yolks or burn the sugar. Stir constantly over moderate heat so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the vanilla

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

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

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