Home › Luncheon Dishes › Butterscotch Pie (C brown sugar T flour C)
Butterscotch Pie (C brown sugar T flour C)
1 C brown sugar 2 T flour 1 C boiling water 1 T butter 2 egg yolks 1 t vanilla Mix sugar, butter, flour, yolks of eggs. Stir in boiling water and boil until thick. Take from fire, add vanilla, and put in baked shell. until thick. Take from fire, add vanilla, and put in baked shell.. Beat whites of eggs for top.
Miss Hannah Meyer.
Note: Gladys Suydam uses 4 T flour, 4 T butter and 1 C milk instead of water. .
A church-supper butterscotch cream pie, set down in the shorthand of its day: C is cup, T tablespoon, t teaspoon. The duplicated line in the middle is a typesetting slip in the original, not a second cooking step.
- Which version to makeThe base recipe — 2 tablespoons flour to a cup of water — makes a soft, saucy filling that will slump when cut. The variation credited to Gladys Suydam (4 T flour, 4 T butter, 1 cup milk) is closer to a modern butterscotch cream pie and will slice cleanly. If you want a pie rather than a pudding in a shell, use hers.
- Do not add the water to the eggs cold-headed"Stir in boiling water" into a mixture containing raw yolks will scramble them if done quickly. Pour the boiling liquid in a thin stream while whisking hard, then return the whole to the pan. This is the hinge of the recipe.
- Boil it, and mean itFlour-thickened fillings must actually reach a full bubble for a minute or two, both to cook out the raw starch taste and to deactivate the enzyme in the yolks that would otherwise thin the filling as it stands. Whisk constantly; it catches on the bottom.
- Brown sugarUse dark brown for the butterscotch flavour the name promises. Brown sugar of the period was often less refined than today's light brown, though grades varied considerably.
- The shellA "baked shell" means a crust baked before it is filled; the recipe specifies no size and no temperature. In modern terms, blind-bake and cool a 9-inch crust before filling. The filling does no further baking except under the meringue.
- The meringueNo sugar or timing is given, as was assumed knowledge. Beat the two whites to soft peaks with about 4 tablespoons of sugar added a spoonful at a time, spread it so it seals to the crust all the way round, and bake at 350F for 12 to 15 minutes until browned. Spreading it over hot filling helps the underside set rather than weep.
- YieldOne 9-inch pie, six to eight servings. The filling sets as it cools; chill it before cutting for the cleanest slices.
Butterscotch pie belongs to the large family of American "cream" or "custard" pies built on a stovetop filling poured into a pre-baked shell — cheaper and quicker than a baked custard, and forgiving of a cook working through a church-supper list. What makes it butterscotch is simply brown sugar and butter, and the name is generally traced to British boiled sweets of the early nineteenth century; the "scotch" is sometimes explained as scotching, or scoring, the cooled candy for breaking rather than as anything to do with Scotland, though neither account is settled. Its appearance in a community cookbook is typical: these volumes were compiled from members' own cards, printed to raise money, and credited by name, which is why a second cook's amendment sits attached to Miss Meyer's recipe rather than replacing it. The economy of the thing is worth noting — a cup of boiling water in place of milk, two yolks in the filling and their whites used up on top, nothing wasted.