Taste of the Day: Part III

Friends and family have asked how we spend our time while away from home for a month… they obviously have not been reading the blog. I tell them exploring the city is our first goal, learning about the history, culture and architecture.  We always play a little game imaging what it would be like to live where we are, which parts of town and what type of home.  Steve, ever the optimist, even goes so far as to look at real estate listings to compare home prices in some of the neighbourhoods.  But another part of the adventure is the food.  I always come up with a project: in Tucson it was the Sonoran hot dog and in Savannah I faced my fears head on with shrimp and grits. Our time in Florida has been plentiful with seafood, especially shrimp.  But my particular attention was drawn to key limes.

According to Southern Living Magazine, key lime pie is a classic Southern dessert and has been declared the official pie of Florida.  As the name suggests, key limes came from the Florida Keys.   It seems that no matter where you travel in Florida, you will encounter key lime pie or some other key lime concoction that captures what tourists expect to taste when they come to Florida.  Maybe the key lime ambassadors are trying to give Florida orange juice a run for its money in what Americans imagine the taste of Florida to be.  Personally, I think nowadays flamingoes are more popularly associated with Florida than key limes, but I suspect flamingo-based recipes are scarce.  A quick search and I discovered some 5^th century Roman flamingo recipes—Braised Flamingo or Flamingo Tongues—and  a curious recipe for Minnesota campers, Pink Flamingo Stew. As a tourist in sunny Florida given the choice between key lime pie or braised flamingo, which would you choose?

It should come as no surprise that the history of the key lime pie is a matter of fierce pride among Floridians even though the pie’s origin story is uncertain.  According to a 2023 essay in Southern Living, the popular belief is that “Aunt Sally” created the key lime pie in Key West in the 1890s.  Yet, there is evidence to suggest that it wasn’t until the New York Borden condensed milk company’s 1930s recipe for Magic Lemon Cream Pie eventually found its way to Florida and was adapted for key limes that key lime pie was born.  While these stories differ in their elements of citrus and hominess, both capture a spirit of ingenuity. 

The Heavenly Key Lime Pie recipe from Southern Living shows how easy this state pie is to make.

• 1 (14-oz.) can sweetened condensed milk
• 3 egg yolks
• 2 teaspoons Key lime zest
• 1/2 cup Key lime juice
• 1 (9-inch) graham cracker piecrust
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 3 tablespoons powdered sugar
• Garnish: fresh Key lime slices

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Whisk together condensed milk and next 3 ingredients until well blended. Pour mixture into piecrust.
3. Bake at 350°F for 15 minutes or until pie is set. Cool completely on a wire rack (about 1 hour). Chill 1 hour before serving.
4. Beat whipping cream at high speed with an electric mixer 2 to 3 minutes or until soft peaks form, gradually adding powdered sugar.
5. Top pie with whipped cream. Garnish, if desired.

Interestingly, key limes have not been grown commercially in the United States since 1926, when a hurricane devastated Miami, Florida, the Bahamas, and the Gulf Coast. The storm caused catastrophic damage to commercial lime crops in the Florida Keys.  Now, the hardier Persian lime is commercially produced.  Any true Florida key limes remaining these days are grown in backyard gardens and through small farms in Florida. The Key lime has a thinner rind and is smaller, seedier, more acidic and more aromatic than the Persian lime; key limes have a distinctive flavour.  Key limes are native to tropical Southeast Asia and also are known as West Indian lime, bartender’s lime, Omani lime, or Mexican lime.

In the name of science, I have dedicated myself to tasting key lime pies to see what the fuss is about and if there really is much of a difference.

Most of the restaurants in St Augustine said their key lime pie was homemade, and often enough that was followed by “with an old family recipe.”  I tried four restaurants that claimed to have their own homemade key lime pie, and they were all different.  Luckily they were all good, but some were better than others.  What I was looking for was a lush custardy texture with a smack of lime.  Luckily none of them were glow-in-the-dark green, which is just off-putting. 

The first one we tried was from an old well-established family restaurant.  The graham crust was delicious, and the filling was soft almost velvety, and mildly tart. Good and tasty; I felt the key lime journey was off to a delicious start, but I was left wanting more. 

A few days later at a very popular restaurant we were treated to a large square of key lime pie.  I smiled happily even before tasting it.  I plunged my fork in and could tell that it was different.  The texture was firmer, maybe even a little grainy; it reminded me of cheesecake. My tongue confirmed what my eyes had seen: it had a cheesecake vibe and that was a surprise. It certainly was tasty with more lime-ness than the first pie I sampled…a good thing. I liked it a lot, and not just because of the serving size, but I left thinking of cheesecake rather than pie. 

The third one was my Goldilocks key lime pie… just right.  Again, a homemade key lime pie from a small newly opened family restaurant.  This pie had a delicious buttery graham crust and a creamy almost custard-like filling that was perfectly tart.  It wasn’t a face-squinching tartness, but a little tongue-tingle tartness and I liked that a lot.  Easily the best one so far in my opinion.

The last key lime pie trial came from our favourite bistro nearby. The waitress reassured us it was made on the premises and well worth ordering. We took it to go.  By any measure it was average and really didn’t stand out.  The filling was firm and creamy with a taste of lime.  It didn’t have the lushness of some of the others and the lime-ness could best be described as pleasant. My tongue didn’t dance with the taste of lime, and the whole thing just underwhelmed.  Had I already found the best? Would there be another that would catch my attention?  There was one more I wanted to try, and that opened the door to discovering other key lime desserts we were discovering on the menus.

The last key of the lime pies I tried was not house made in St Augustine but imported from Key West.  There they made the pies, and served up the slices dipped in chocolate and frozen on a stick.  This novelty was so good I had to try it again a few days later.  The test-retest reliability was high: each time it was a darned satisfying treat.  The chocolate was its own delight and the pie center was cool and tangy. On a hot day the chocolate got messy and was a bit of a challenge to eat but definitely a worthwhile challenge.  This spin on key lime pie was a keeper, but maybe in a slightly different dessert category, like “not your mom’s key lime pie.”

One restaurant offered key lime crème brûlée.  I am a big fan of crème brûlée, and maybe because of it, a little critical.  The way into this dessert is through the crispy melted sugar shell protecting the top, and if it doesn’t crack on impact with a spoon, then expectations fall.  This key lime crème brûlée did not disappoint.  The sugary top cracked on impact and there was burnt sugar deliciousness.  The custard beneath was creamy and tart and light on the tongue.  From a crème brûlée technical challenge standard, it was five stars. From a key lime dessert standard, it was mild in terms of lime-ness, almost to the point that maybe key lime was wasted on it.  I have had plenty of crème brûlées of many flavours that were intense and delicious.  For this one, the tartness seemed to be more from the dairy than from the lime. The flavour lacked the lime intensity I had hoped for.

Key lime fudge seems like a face-off between sweet and tart.  This fudge was exactly that.  Sugary, citrusy, melt-in-your-mouth, almost too rich to eat, but who are we kidding… of course it was not too rich.  This fudge was sweet but maybe because of the lime, it wasn’t too sugary sweet like fudge sometimes tastes.  This was a good treat we picked up from a farmer’s market.  Checking out five popular recipes online, the basics seem the same: white chocolate chips, sugar, lime juice and evaporated or sweetened condensed milk.  From this base recipe, the variations included the addition of lime zest, marshmallows or macadamia nuts.  I don’t think my sample had any of these, though I love macadamia nuts and that might be worth a try.  A few recipes for fudge riffed on key lime pie by including a graham crust for the fudge.  To me that’s a distraction, and I won’t go there.

If you find yourself brunching and there is a key lime drink on the menu, wouldn’t you try it?  I did. The drink was called Key Lime in the Coconut.  This frozen drink was key lime and coconut goodness with a Plantation Dark Rum float. This drink was a bit of a miracle, combining coconut—one of my favourite adult beverage components—and key lime, as in, lime by any other name would be so tart.  This drink was delicious and my only hesitation is that I am not a fan of frozen drinks.  Aside from cruise ship pina coladas, I tend to stick to on-the-rocks.  I think this would have been just as good—I want to believe even better—on the rocks instead of frozen.  On the other hand, it was all gone, so obviously I wasn’t much put off.  The toasted coconut on the rime was a nice touch. I have previously discussed my love of lime-based cocktails and now I have to think about the possibilities of coconut and lime: a coconut-lime daquiri comes to mind.  Another addition to my Things To Do list. The life of a scientist—yes, even a social scientist—is one of discovery. 

There is a shop in the oldest part of St Augustine that specializes in ice cream sandwiches. The menu boasts 30 flavours of ice cream sandwiches, tempting passersby with caramel coffee toffee, peanut butter praline, blueberry cobbler, chocolate raspberry and creamsicle.  As you might have already guessed, there was a key lime ice cream sandwich.  The key lime ice cream is sandwiched between two graham short bread cookies and these cookies were crispy and buttery and positively delicious. There was a definite difference between these cookies and the usual graham cracker pie crust.  It really can’t be the buttery-ness since both are butter-based.  But these cookies were crisp and had a snap to them before melting in your mouth.  A graham cracker pie crust almost never is crispy.  I have had tough ones that were difficult to cut with a fork, but more often they are crumbly and merely an edible assist for getting the pie filling out of the pan.  I was so fascinated by the texture and taste of the “sandwicher” that I almost forgot to pay attention to the “sandwichee.”  Yes, the ice cream was definitely lime and went well with the graham short bread cookies.  I would say it was in the middle range of my desired level of lime-ness… maybe a little key lime zest would have added more… zest… more tartness… more tongue tingle.  That being said, I want to go back and try the s’mores ice cream sandwich in part because I expect that same graham short bread cookies.

My last experience throwing myself in front of a key lime confection was key lime chocolates.  St Augustine has a few chocolate shops and chocolate truffles are big seller. Very much like the ice cream sandwiches, chocolate truffles come in different flavours and I sampled the key lime, and a few others.  I must admit that I wasn’t very optimistic about the key lime chocolate.  I was expecting a lime-scented chocolate and thought the lime would be subtle.  And thinking back to the chocolate covered key lime pie on a stick, how could this compare.  I took a bite and was surprised and pleased.  The center of this bonbon was a key lime crème, and though the palest of green in colour, there was no doubt about the lime-ness. Yum, yum, yum.  What a good investment that chocolate was.  Highly recommend.  And what a wonderful way to wrap up my study of ubiquitous key lime.