Home › Recipes › Butterscotch Pie
Butterscotch Pie
11/2 Cupfuls Boiling Water 11/2 Cupfuls Brown Sugar 11/2 Tablespoonfuls Granulated Sugar 4 Tablespoonfuls Cornstarch 11/2 Tablespoonfuls Snowdrift ⅛ Teaspoonful Salt 1/2 Teaspoonful Vanilla 3 Eggs Pastry Caramelize the granulated sugar and add the boiling water and brown sugar. Let this boil thoroughly, then thicken it with the salt and cornstarch, mixed with barely enough cold water to moisten. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens, then add the Snowdrift and pour the mixture into the egg yolks, which have been slightly beaten. Pour into a cooked pastry shell, cover with a meringue, made as described in Lemon Meringue Pie, and bake ten minutes in a slow oven, 325 degrees F.
A cornstarch-thickened brown sugar custard in a pre-baked shell, from a shortening manufacturer's promotional book. The whole dish turns on the caramel: the granulated sugar must go dark enough to taste of caramel rather than just sweet syrup.
- The fractionsRead the quantities as 1 1/2 cupfuls boiling water, 1 1/2 cupfuls brown sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoonfuls granulated sugar, 1 1/2 tablespoonfuls Snowdrift, and 1/8 teaspoonful salt. Cornstarch is 4 tablespoonfuls, which is right for a firm sliceable filling.
- SnowdriftA brand of cottonseed-oil shortening sold from around the turn of the twentieth century (hydrogenated in its later formulations); the book exists to sell it. Use the same volume of unsalted butter for better flavour, since here it is a finishing fat for richness, not a structural one.
- Caramelizing 1 1/2 tablespoonsThat is a very small amount of sugar to melt in a pan without scorching. Use a small heavy skillet, keep it moving, and pull it from the heat the moment it is the colour of an old penny. Some cooks will prefer to double the caramel sugar and reduce the brown sugar by the same amount.
- Adding boiling water to caramelMolten sugar and water sputter violently. Hold the pan away from you and add the water in stages; any hardened caramel will redissolve as the mixture boils.
- The cornstarch slurry"Barely enough cold water to moisten" means roughly 3 to 4 tablespoons, whisked smooth before it goes into the boiling syrup. Lumps at this stage never disperse.
- The yolksPouring the hot starch mixture into the slightly beaten yolks tempers them, but as written the filling then goes straight into the shell. Return the combined mixture to the pan and cook it, stirring, for two minutes more: this both sets the yolks and destroys the starch-digesting enzyme in raw yolk, which otherwise thins the filling as it stands.
- Meringue on hot fillingSpread the meringue while the filling is still hot and seal it right to the crust edge all round. That is what prevents weeping and the shrunken gap between meringue and pastry.
- Slow ovenThe 325F given is the actual figure and is correct for meringue. Ten minutes browns the peaks; if it is still pale, go a few minutes longer rather than raising the heat.
- YieldThe quantities suit roughly one 8- or 9-inch shell, though the recipe gives no size; six to eight servings. Chill well before cutting or the slices will slump.
Butterscotch as a flavour is a nineteenth-century British confectionery idea -- brown sugar and butter boiled together -- that American home cooks moved into pies, puddings and cake fillings as cornstarch became a cheap pantry staple. This version belongs to a genre of publication rather than to a region: the manufacturer's cook book, given away or sold cheaply to teach housewives to use a new industrial fat. Snowdrift was a cottonseed-oil shortening promoted heavily in the early twentieth century, and books like this one worked it into as many recipes as they could, including ones such as this where a spoonful or two of butter had always done the job. The pastry shell is baked separately and the filling cooked on the stovetop, a division of labour that let a cook with an unreliable range control the one part of the pie that could not be rescued.