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Dessert

Butter Scotch Filling

A sweet butter and brown sugar filling thickened with flour, 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Mix in the brown sugar and flour.

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

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and stir constantly until thickened.

  5. Add the salt.

Make the meringue and bake

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

  2. Gradually beat in the brown sugar and a pinch of salt.

  3. Spread the meringue over the filling and bake in a 400°F (200°C) 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, rounded flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramel-like depth to the filling and meringue.
Flour
Thickens the filling as it cooks with the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling that thickens when heated.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they cook and add richness.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks in until thickened. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the filling gets too hot or is not stirred constantly. Constant stirring over gentle heat in the double boiler keeps the custard smooth as it thickens.

“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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