Key Lime Pie

Ingredients

• 1 pre-baked 9-inch graham cracker crust
• 4 large egg yolks
• 1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
• 1/2 cup key lime juice
• 1 tbsp lime zest

Method

1. Preheat oven to 325°F (165°C).
2. Whisk the egg yolks, condensed milk, lime juice, and zest together until smooth.
3. Bake for 15 minutes, until just set, then cool to room temperature before chilling.
4. Pour the filling into the crust and smooth the top.
5. Refrigerate at least 4 hours, or until fully set, before slicing.

The Tale of Key Lime Pie

Story updated September 15, 2026

Key lime pie traces to the Florida Keys in the late nineteenth century, where small, intensely tart key limes had grown since the 1830s. The pie's defining ingredient, sweetened condensed milk, was less a stylistic choice than a necessity: the isolated Keys had no dairy herds and no reliable refrigeration until the 1930s, so canned condensed milk, patented decades earlier, was the only practical way to make a creamy filling. Local legend credits a cook known only as Aunt Sally, employed by Key West's first millionaire, William Curry, with an early version around the turn of the twentieth century, while other tellings point to the island's sponge fishermen. None of these stories is documented well enough to be called definitive, and a competing account credits the Borden company with popularizing a similar recipe around 1931 to promote its condensed milk. Whatever its exact birth, the pie became a symbol of the Keys and was named Florida's official state pie in 2006.