Florentine or à la Florentine is a term from classic French cuisine that refers to dishes that typically include a base of cooked

spinach Spinach (''Spinacia oleracea'') is a leafy green flowering plant native to central and western Asia. It is of the order Caryophyllales, family Amaranthaceae, subfamily Chenopodioideae. Its leaves are a common edible vegetable consumed eith ...

, a protein component and

Mornay sauce A Mornay sauce is a béchamel sauce with shredded or grated cheese added. Some variations use different combinations of Gruyère, Emmental cheese, white cheddar or even Parmesan cheese. A Mornay sauce made with cheddar is commonly used to mak ...

. Chicken Florentine is the most popular version. Because Mornay sauce is a derivation of

béchamel sauce Bechamel sauce ( ) is a sauce traditionally made from a white roux (butter and flour in a 1:1 mixture by weight) and milk. Bechamel may also be referred to as besciamella (Italy), besamel (Greece), or white sauce (U.S.). French, Italian and Greek ...

which includes

roux Roux () is a mixture of flour and fat cooked together and used to thicken sauces. Roux is typically made from equal parts of flour and fat by weight. The flour is added to the melted fat or Cooking oil, oil on the stove top, blended until smoo ...

and requires time and skill to prepare correctly, many contemporary recipes use simpler cream based sauces.

History

Culinary lore attributes the term to 1533, when

Catherine de Medici Catherine de' Medici ( it, Caterina de' Medici, ; french: Catherine de Médicis, ; 13 April 1519 – 5 January 1589) was an Florentine noblewoman born into the Medici family. She was Queen of France from 1547 to 1559 by marriage to King ...

of Florence married

Henry II of France Henry II (french: Henri II; 31 March 1519 – 10 July 1559) was King of France from 31 March 1547 until his death in 1559. The second son of Francis I and Duchess Claude of Brittany, he became Dauphin of France upon the death of his elder broth ...

. She supposedly brought a staff of chefs, lots of kitchen equipment and a love of spinach to Paris, and popularized Florentine style dishes. Food historians have debunked this story, and Italian influence on French cuisine long predates this marriage.

Pierre Franey Pierre Franey (January 13, 1921 – October 15, 1996) was a French chef, best known for his televised cooking shows and his "60 Minute Gourmet" column in ''The New York Times''. Early years Franey grew up in northern Burgundy, France. As ...

considered this theory apocryphal, but embraced the term Florentine in 1983.

Auguste Escoffier Georges Auguste Escoffier (; 28 October 1846 – 12 February 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Marie-An ...

included a recipe for Sole Florentine in his 1903 classic ''Le guide culinaire'', translated into English as ''A Guide to Modern Cookery''. It is recipe 831 in that translation. Escoffier called for poaching the fish in butter and ''fumet'', a stock made of fish bones, cooking the spinach in butter, covering the dish with Mornay sauce, garnishing it with grated cheese, and finishing it in an oven or

salamander Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All ten ...

. In his 1936 cookbook ''L'Art culinaire moderne'' which was first translated for American cooks in 1966 as ''Modern French Culinary Art'',

Henri-Paul Pellaprat Henri-Paul Pellaprat (; Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, 1869–1954) was a French chef, founder with the journalist Marthe Distel of Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. He was the author of ''La cuisine familiale et pratique'' and other classic Fren ...

included five recipes for spinach based Florentine dishes with Mornay sauce. The protein components were chicken breasts, cod fillets, sweetbreads, stuffed lamb breast and oysters.

Craig Claiborne Craig Claiborne (September 4, 1920 January 22, 2000) was an American restaurant critic, food journalist and book author. A long-time food editor and restaurant critic for '' The New York Times'', he was also the author of numerous cookbooks a ...

published a recipe for Oysters Florentine with Mornay sauce in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' in 1958.

Variations

quiche Quiche ( ) is a French tart consisting of pastry crust filled with savoury custard and pieces of cheese, meat, seafood or vegetables. A well-known variant is quiche Lorraine, which includes lardons or bacon. Quiche may be served hot, warm or ...

containing spinach is often called "quiche Florentine". Poached or soft cooked eggs served on spinach with a Mornay sauce or equivalent is often called "eggs Florentine".

Chicken Florentine

Chicken Florentine gained popularity in the United States as early as 1931, although the quality of the dish was uneven, and canned mushroom soup was sometimes used as a quick sauce in the years that followed. By the 1960s and 1970s, the general quality of the dish had deteriorated to "casserole" and "wedding banquet" food. Writing in ''The New York Times'' in 1971, Claiborne praised a restaurant version of Chicken Florentine, describing the chicken as "batter‐cooked and served with mushrooms in a lemon sauce". Contemporary cookbook authors are attempting to "restore" the dish to "its elegant roots", with "clearer, brighter flavors".

References

{{reflist Spinach dishes French cuisine French chicken dishes