Skip to main content
Dessert

Butter Scotch Pie

A sweet pie filling of butter, sugar, and eggs baked in a pie shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine brown sugar, water, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage.

  3. Mix egg yolks, flour, and milk in a separate bowl.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the syrup.

  5. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  6. Pour the filling into a pie shell.

Make the topping

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff.

  2. Fold sugar into the beaten whites.

  3. Spread the mixture over the top of 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. 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. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and the caramel-like butterscotch flavor of the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set and add richness to the custard.
Flour
Stabilizes the filling and helps it thicken smoothly without becoming runny.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds creaminess.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stiff, airy topping that holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the butterscotch syrup.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the syrup.. Egg yolks can scramble or turn lumpy when they meet hot syrup too quickly. Adding the mixture gradually while stirring steadily keeps it smooth as it thickens.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Milletfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes