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Dessert

Butter Scotch Pie

A sweet pie with a brown sugar and butter filling topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Butter Scotch Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Bake the pie crust according to your recipe.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, mix the brown sugar and water together.

  2. Stir in the flour and the yolks of the eggs.

  3. Add the butter and boil until thick.

  4. Add vanilla to taste.

  5. Pour the mixture into the baked crust.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. For the meringue, whip the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add sugar to the whipped egg whites to taste.

  3. Spread the meringue on top of the pie and bake until 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 caramel flavor that defines the butterscotch filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets firm when cooled.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the filling and enrich it, while whipped whites form the meringue topping.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the filling, contributing to its flavor and smooth texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they form the airy structure of the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Boil the filling until thick. The starch in the flour must be fully cooked in boiling liquid to thicken the filling; if it is not boiled long enough the pie will stay runny and may not set after cooling.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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