A butter tart () is a type of small pastry tart highly regarded in Canadian cuisine. The sweet tart consists of a filling of butter, sugar, syrup, and egg, baked in a pastry shell until the filling is semi-solid with a crunchy top. The butter tart should not be confused with butter pie (a savoury pie from the Preston area of Lancashire, England) or with bread and butter pudding. Recipes for the butter tart vary according to the families baking them. Because of this, the appearance and physical characteristics of the butter tart – the firmness of its pastry, or the consistency of its filling – also vary. Traditionally, the English Canadian tart consists of butter, sugar, and eggs in a pastry shell, similar to the French-Canadian sugar pie, or the base of the U.S. pecan pie without the nut topping. The butter tart is different from the sugar pie given the lack of flour in the filling. The butter tart is different from pecan pie in that it has a "runnier" filling due to the omission of corn starch. Often raisins, walnuts, or pecans are added to the traditional butter tart, although the acceptability of such additions is a matter of national debate. As an iconic Canadian food and one of the most popular desserts in the country, the raisin-or-no-raisin question can provoke polarizing debate. More exotic flavours are also produced by some bakers. Examples such as maple, bacon, pumpkin, chili, and salted caramel cardamom flavours have been made for competitions. History Butter tarts were common in pioneer Canadian cooking, and they remain a characteristic pastry of Canada, considered a recipe of genuinely Canadian origin. It is primarily eaten in and associated with the English-speaking provinces of Canada. The butter tart is a derivative of one or more of the following: Border tart: a similar pie including dried fruit from the Anglo-Scottish border country, Sugar pie (): which possibly came with the arrival of the "King's Daughters" in Quebec during the 1600s, where the imported brides used maple syrup, butter and dried fruit to make a possible precursor to modern examples of the butter tart, Pecan pie: which possibly came north from the southern United States, Backwards pie: which is found in the Maritimes and western Canada and made with corn syrup, Shoofly pie: which is made with molasses and comes from the Pennsylvania Dutch community, Treacle tart: which