Lemon Chiffon Pie 🍋

It’s a perfect dessert on a warm summer day, but you will absolutely melt as you prepare it over a hot stove. Worth it? Yes! 🥧🍋

I was a little afraid of and a had a lot of respect for Muffie Puloni —longtime cook at the Seaward Inn—when I started work there in the summer of 1984.

She was tiny and Italian. More significantly she’d grown up and still lived in Pigeon Cove. She was a childhood friend of my grandfather. She was a Cov-ah (long o and New England R) NOT a Rockporter, as all Pigeon Cove residents proudly proclaimed. She cooked and baked, and ran the kitchen firmly. Some waitresses feared her; she didn’t tolerate foolishness.

Muffie taught me how to make her lemon chiffon pie, carefully tempering the egg yolks with the boiling lemon juice and water, and then letting the concoction cool to the right temperature, perfect for folding into the whipped and sweetened egg whites.

One of the nicest compliments I ever received was Muffie telling me that I reminded her of herself when she was 19. The highest praise from a woman who had no time for fools and tears.