The tarte au citron demonstration by Chef Léo Giorgis from L’Almanach Montmartre was an exercise in fortitude, both the chef’s long winding road to the finish line and my own desire for a chair and a glass of wine. This classic French dessert would be the ideal pastry chef final exam—making, rolling out and shaping delicate pâte sucrée, cooking an egg-yolkbased lemon filling thickened with gelatin, whipping up an Italian meringue with hot sugar syrup, and then assembling and decorating all the parts. Halfway through, I sat up and exclaimed, “Lemon Meringue Pie!” realizing that much of Chef Giorgis’ recipe could be applied to the American version of tarte au citron.

In the late fifties and sixties, I spent many Friday evenings in the back of a Ford Country Squire station wagon heading up Route 22 to Vermont. We stopped at the Roe- Jan Diner in Hillsdale, N.Y., (now the Sweet Peas Country Diner) where I ordered the pale lemon meringue pie with the soggy crust, the slightly lemony Jell-O-like filling and the weepy meringue that had shrunk back from the edges like a pile of snow on a sunny March day. But I still loved it, all the while dreaming of a more perfect embodiment of the ideal, a filling that is creamy but clean, the structure precise, the balance obvious from the first bite. Nothing slumps, nothing weeps, nothing feels gratuitous.

In France, lemon tart is often used as a benchmark. You find it everywhere, from modest neighborhood bakeries to ambitious
pâtisseries, and it tells you a lot about the person behind the counter. Too sharp, too sweet, badly set or downright floppy and you know immediately. And then there’s the modern epidemic of crusts that are too thick and too hard, the kind you nearly want to send flying as you attack them with the back of a spoon. When it’s right, though, a lemon tart or lemon meringue pie shows technical control, restraint and attention to detail.

When applied to Lemon Meringue Pie, four things stood out. The addition of olive oil in the filling, which softened the acidity, the use of gelatin instead of cornstarch as a thickener, resulting in a more delicate and less floury texture, whipped cream enriched with mascarpone folded into the filling for creaminess, and, finally, an Italian meringue made with drizzled hot sugar syrup for a rich, pillowy texture, one that would hold for days and never weep.

Back in the Milk Street kitchen, we tested cornstarch instead of gelatin, which was dull-tasting and could not bear the weight of the meringue. About a teaspoon of gelatin turned out to be the sweet spot: sliceable, but still creamy. We tested crusts too. A pat-in-the-pan crust held up nicely under the filling but easily fell apart when sliced. We remedied this problem by letting the filling cool in the prebaked crust, which helped bind the crust together, resulting in clean slices. The meringue was its own project. French meringue, just sugar and egg whites, weeps. Italian meringue takes more effort—we had to heat a sugar syrup to 238 degrees and drizzle that into the egg whites while they were beating in the mixer—but it held its shape, stayed glossy, and didn’t leak, even after a day in the refrigerator.

The final recipe is, and let me be perfectly honest, the best Lemon Meringue Pie in the world. Creamy, light, and lemony with a billowy meringue topping. I may have grown up with the mediocre diner version but after more than half a century, I have discovered the perfect reincarnation of my favorite childhood dessert.

Chris Kimball

Christopher Kimball is founder of Milk Street, which produces Milk Street Magazine, Milk Street Television on PBS, and the weekly public radio show Milk Street Radio. He founded Cook’s Magazine in 1980 and was host and executive producer of America’s Test Kitchen until 2016. Kimball is the author of several books, including "The Yellow Farmhouse" and "Fannie’s Last Supper."