Half a cup, or 120ml, juice is fairly standard – when you learn this is about four standard or 20 key limes, you may well feel relieved they’re so hard to come by. A good way to create a more well-rounded, perfumed flavour is to add zest, as most recipes suggest, whisking it with the yolks to release the volatile oils before stirring in the condensed milk and juice. In blind taste tests, however, this claim doesn’t always stand up, but whether or not they have a point, the fact remains that even on the Keys themselves, the limes used tend to be grown in Mexico, and even these are very rarely found outside the Americas, so I’ll be using standard fruit here. Some recipes assert that this pie is only worth making with key limes, the local name for a distinct species of thin-skinned, acidic, south-east Asian lime thought to have been brought to the Keys by Spanish sailors, and rhapsodise over their gorgeously aromatic qualities. Photographer Stephen Shore’s take on key lime pie uses a cornflour and water base, which helps dial down the tang factor. I haven’t suggested this step in the recipe below, because it’s not always practical, especially if you want to take the pie to a picnic, but I would recommend giving it a whirl if you are serving it in the vicinity of a freezer: leave it in there for at least three hours, then get it out 10 minutes before serving. Not only is this the dish that Meryl Streep pushes into Jack Nicholson’s smug face in the film adaptation of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, but the icy temperature brings out the custardy smoothness of the filling in a way that’s extremely satisfying to eat. Better, if you’re really keen to serve up perfect wedges, to go down the freezer route, as Jennifer Steinhauer’s recipe for the New York Times suggests. My panel, however, feels that it also gives the pie a texture more reminiscent of a baked cheesecake, particularly if, like Pepe’s Cafe in Key West (“the oldest eating house in the Keys!”), you whisk egg whites into the mixture to make it really fluffy.

Many American recipes express caution on the subject of raw egg yolk that’s less of a concern in the UK, where hens are vaccinated against salmonella, but that’s no reason not to try a baked recipe when Cooks Illustrated magazine makes such a compelling case for heat yielding a “thick, creamy and unctuous” (though I suspect they mean rich) filling with a pronounced lime flavour – “the difference was remarkable”. If anyone can explain why, please do let me know in the comments below my theory is no-churn ice cream.) (Interestingly, I have some trouble getting hold of condensed milk the man behind the counter in the third shop I try tells me demand has soared this summer. The more yolks you use, the richer and firmer the result – chef Brad McDonald’s pie, from his book Deep South, is undoubtedly delicious with just two, but it’s tricky to cut into neat slices. The mixture is further thickened by the addition of lime juice, whose acidity “cooks” the yolks, coagulating the proteins to give the whole thing a stiffer consistency. Most key lime pie recipes make use of the aforementioned condensed milk, beaten with egg yolks to enrich it and turn it into a kind of quick custard. Instead, here’s a recipe.īrad McDonald’s deeply southern key lime pie. That said, there have been more recent claims that it’s simply an adaptation of a 1930s recipe for lemon pie created by a condensed milk manufacturer 1,500 miles north in New York City, but I won’t go there. Though it probably dates from the late 19th century, the dish became famous when the tourist industry took off in the Keys following the construction of the Overseas Highway – in a 1948 travel piece on Key West, the Washington Post includes it, along with turtle steaks and black bean soup, as one of the “epicurean pleasures not to be overlooked”. Put the two together, and you have most of a key lime pie. This splendid isolation fostered a reliance on local ingredients such as limes and the cans of condensed milk popular in tropical climates before widespread refrigeration. Key lime pie is, like so many regional specialities, very much the product of its environment – in this case, the Florida Keys, a chain of coral islands that trail lazily into the Gulf of Mexico and that were only linked to the US mainland in 1912.

Pappadeaux key lime pie recipe