Historical Recipes: Professor Nicolaas Mink on his Life and Floridian Cuisine

Professor Nicolaas Mink teaches history at the University of Wisconsin in Stevens Point. An award-winning author, his writings on food and culture have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and journals across the country. Professor Mink’s current projects include a manuscript that explores the growth of the restaurant industry in America. We have had the honor of interviewing Professor Mink on his life and his thoughts on the history and culture of Floridian cuisine. 

What inspired you to study history? 

I grew up just outside of Miami and when we were little, my parents traveled with us often. We took long trips, like ones to Cannon Beach, Oregon, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Portland, Maine, and short trips, like weekend jaunts to Key West, Naples, and Orlando. There, too, were all those places in between.  Since my parents hated to fly, these journeys took place in our Ford Aerostar. My Uncle Sam dubbed that Ford our second home. During summer, it had most of our earthly possessions strapped to its roof or crammed underneath and behind its seats.

Although I did not know it at the time, these travels inspired me to study history.  Whenever we arrived somewhere, I always wanted to know why a place looked, smelled, felt, and acted the way it did. I would wonder why corn and soybeans grew in Iowa and Illinois and not Florida. I questioned why some folks rolled their ‘r’s and why other’s ‘boats’ sounded a lot like ‘boots.’ I ultimately relied on the study of the past to answer these questions. Although we live in a day in which digital technology has seemed to obliterate physical place, I still firmly believe that good history is history that has been wedded to its place, and that is one of the reasons I study food.

Why have you chosen food studies as your research focus?

Food reveals more about peoples and times than many realize.  Although some historians might disagree, I would argue that the study of food gives us the most intimate glimpse into the inner workings of culture that we have.  After all, societies organize themselves around how they produce food; families organize themselves around how they consume food. Thus, studying food helps us understand phenomena large and small, intimate and expansive. I’m glad to see more scholars asking questions that have food at their center.

When I wrote my first article on food, the professor whose class I was taking—who is a luminary in modern American history, mind you—had little idea that something called “food history” or “food studies” even existed. This is the piece that explores the links between stone crab consumption and production that appeared four years ago in a journal that should be on every foodies’ bookshelf, Gastronomica, and has since put me on the speed dial of anyone interested in knowing about that fishery or about Florida cuisine in general. Nowadays, I can say I study food and people know what I am talking about. It has been a very rapid change in just five years time.

How would you describe Floridian cuisine?  Does it vary by region?

Florida is one of the most culturally and ecologically diverse states in the country. Its cuisine defies easy characterization, and that is part of the beauty of Florida’s food.  Northern Florida’s cuisine resembles much of the lower South’s, with its reliance on various animal fats, legumes, meats, and, of course, corn.  If you’re interested in this tradition, I urge you to pick up Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ 1942 classic, Cross Creek Cookery. It is an honest and touching window into this culinary world (and it’s still in print!).  On the other hand, subtropical Key West’s cooks still often replace recipes that call for ground pork or beef with ground turtle, conch, and fish. Turtle meatloaf, anyone? Every cookbook published in Key West before the 1980s—when marine turtle consumption was banned—would have had multiple recipes for this dish.  The culinary influences from the Caribbean and South and Central America are well known, but the west coast of Florida has large pockets of Greeks and Italians that have left their own influence on Florida’s food.  The Greek restaurants in the little fishing village of Tarpon Springs are unmatched anywhere in the country.

What influences have shaped/are shaping local culinary tastes?

Local cuisine—and localism in general—is a funny concept, for usually outsiders are the ones who peer into a given place and characterize a particular food “local.” Even those of us who identify with the local-vore movement eat local largely because we want to proclaim a particular identity to outsiders. Nonetheless, ecology, history, and culture all combine to shape local culinary tastes. Take cheese in Wisconsin.  Most cheese continues to be made in south central and southwest Wisconsin mostly because in the days before adequate refrigeration those were the areas that couldn’t ship their fresh milk to Chicago and Milwaukee without spoilage. Ecologically, most dairy cattle can’t survive a winter in the northern third of our state, so there is little dairying there. Culturally, the immigrants from northwest Europe that populated the southern and central part of the state came with cultural traditions of dairying. In fact, there are a few herds of Brown Swiss in south central Wisconsin that came with immigrants to the United States 150 years ago and have remained in the same families ever since (despite the urging of the USDA to adopt higher yielding breeds such as Holsteins and Guernseys.) You could work through a similar ecology-history-culture exercise with about every local food. Try it. It’s fun.

What role do restaurants have in shaping local culinary tastes?

As consumer spaces that have powerful marketing apparatuses and profound cultural influence, restaurants have played an important role in shaping local tastes.  For one, they take something that is usually a private activity—eating—and turn it into a public display.  Once public, the rituals of eating a particular cuisine help to create a shared identity that extends beyond the private world of the family, an identity that is decidedly local in nature. At the same time, one of the interesting things about restaurants (and one of the big arguments that I’m making in my book) is that after World War II, these institutions emerged for a number of reasons as the great Taste Creators in American food culture.  Before that time, home cooks held this role, and most restaurateurs made a concerted effort to emulate domestic cuisine. Some even went as far as poaching recipes from household magazines and featuring the celebrated dishes of local women on their menus.  This changed after the war for complicated reasons, and the consequences were profound.  More Americans began dining at restaurants to learn new dishes, taste new foods, and try new cuisines. These cuisines, foods, and dishes expanded diners palates and helped to create local tastes that centered on foods served in restaurants.

What do you predict for the future of Floridian cuisine?

Historians are loathe to predict the future, but here’s what I can say: If you asked anyone in the 1920s if they thought a hamburger sandwich craze would sweep the country just a decade later they probably would have laughed at you. The same holds true with a regional cuisine like BBQ, whose spread across the country in the postwar era was remarkable and unforeseen.  Then there’s what super chefs like Rick Bayless, Bobby Flay, and Lidia Bastianich have done in the last ten years—they’ve turned marginalized working-class food into $100 a person gastronomic adventures. They’ve accomplished something that would have been unheard of, even as late as the mid eighties. Cuisines change for unexpected and complicated reasons, and that’s part of the fun of studying them.

The story of key lime pie and its recipe.

Key lime pie is one of my favorite Florida foods. It is also one of those quintessential Florida dishes on the state’s “required eating list” for many gourmands and tourists. You can always tell how important a dish is to a local culture by how heated the arguments get over the authenticity of a recipe. For key lime pie, these arguments usually center on two debates: should cooks use graham cracker or pastry crust? And should they utilize meringue or whipped cream topping? I prefer the former in both cases, although I have had some excellent versions that deviate from the “authentic” dish.

Key lime pie has a fascinating story, too: Key limes are not native to the Florida Keys, as many people believe. They were brought to Florida by a botanist named Henry Perrine in the middle of the 19th century. Perrine hoped to create a giant subtropical plant experiment station in South Florida. The Federal government even gave him the largest land grant ever given to a private citizen—25,000 acres—to do so.  Perrine died in the Seminole Wars, but his limes as well as many other species became “naturalized” to the South Florida Landscape.  To market these Mexican limes, the Florida Department of Agriculture concocted “Key Lime Pie” contests to popularize these relatively unknown products. Nowadays, it’s considered a delicacy. Here’s my recipe. It’s milder than most. Whether they choose graham cracker or pastry, whipped cream or meringue, most of the restaurants in the Keys want to knock eaters back with these potent little limes.  That is not really my style. You can find key limes (usually from Mexico) at most supermarkets.

Key Lime Pie

Crust:
1 1/3 cup crushed graham cracker (usually one package)
1 stick butter
¼ cup brown sugar

Filling:

½ cup freshly-squeezed key lime juice
4 egg yolks
1 can sweetened, condensed milk
10 egg whites
¼ cup powder sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat over to 400 degrees. Combine graham cracker crumbs, stick of butter, and ¼ cup brown sugar in a mixing bowl. Press gently into 9 inch pie plate and bake for 10 minutes in oven, or until lightly brown. Take the crust out to cool slightly. Meanwhile, beat 4 egg yolks for 3 or 4 minutes on high or until their color turns pale yellow. While beating, slowly drizzle in the sweetened condensed milk. Once incorporated, whisk in the lime juice and set aside. In another bowl whip egg whites to soft peaks. Once they’ve reached this stage begin slowly beating in powdered sugar and vanilla until the egg whites have formed stiff peaks. Fold 1/6th of the beaten egg whites into the key lime custard mixture. This will lighten up filling and help the custard set.  Pour the key lime mixture into pie crust then gently mound the meringue on top of the custard filling. This pie will have a very high meringue.  Bake in the same 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes, or until the peaks of the meringue turn dark brown. Cool for one hour before sticking in refrigerator for another hour before serving.  Serve chilled.

For more information, contact Professor Nicolaas Mink at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it