By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Food Blogger
There are two essential foods in Key West and the Florida Keys: conch fritter and Key Lime Pie.
The former is a yummy ball fried like hush puppies from the conchs, the large shells that sounds like the ocean when you hold it up to your ear. They are so much a part of the culture that Key West is unofficially known as the Conch Republic and Kenny Chesney has a song called “Key’s In The Conch Shell.”
The Key Lime Pie is also strongly associated with the area. There are stores devoted to selling a slice and it’s available in nearly every restaurant from Mile Marker 105 to MM0. The most prominent sign in Key West is “Best Key Lime Pie” in front of those many stores.
But here’s a spoiler alert: the key limes used in Key West Key Lime pies are not from the Keys. Not anymore anyway. They are imported from Mexico.
Oh, once they were, which gave birth to the popular dessert. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 destroyed many commercial lime crops in the Keys and later a drought in 1966 put them in further peril. Today, key limes in Key West are grown in backyards, not on huge farms. There are not enough key limes in the Keys to feed the voracious appetite people have for Key Lime Pie.
Key limes are much smaller and more tart than the more familiar Persian (also known as Tahitian) limes. They are about the size of a golf ball and were brought to the keys by Dr. Henry Perrine in the 1830s.
The origin of Key Lime Pie, like many famous foods and cocktails – where exactly was the Pina Colada created, for instance? – is a mystery. Some claim it was from fisherman who had the limes on board and mixed them with sweetened condensed milk (this I find dubious; what would prompt fisherman to mix them together in the first place) while other say it was :Aunt Sally,” a cook for a Florida millionaire who came up with it at West’s Curry Mansion.
Wherever it came from and whom created it does not matter to the tens of thousands of Key West visitors who enjoy it during their vacation.
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