Pizza Florentine with Spinach? Not in Florence!

What are the origins of the idea that dishes containing spinach come from Florence?

Florentine pizza? (Illustration by author)

When I eat at an Italian restaurant in the US, I am always amused by the menu entries that are described as Florentine. It invariably means that it’s made with spinach. Pizza Florentine? Pizza with spinach. Pasta alla Florentine? Pasta with spinach-based sauce. Quiche Florentine? You get the idea.

I find it amusing because the names for these menu items are unknown in Italy.

The pizza place across the street from my apartment in Modena has a pizza topped with spinach on the menu, but it is called Pizza Braccio di Ferro, literally translated as Pizza with Arms of Iron. However, Braccio di Ferro is the Italian name for the cartoon character Popeye the Sailor, who was famous for getting his strength from eating spinach. More dignified restaurants will just call it Pizza Spinaci.

When I told my family that any Italian food that contained spinach was labelled as being Florentine, at first they looked confused and then laughed. It made no sense to them, and it didn’t make sense to me either. It was just another one of those strange American things.

So where did this association of spinach and Florence come from?

It turns out that the French are to blame.

One cool, but debunked story involves Catherine de Medici, who was from Florence. She married Henry II of France and moved there in 1533. Apparently, she loved spinach so much that the recipes that her cooks made got the name Florentine added to them [1]. Unfortunately, there are no records of these foods, despite the preservation of menus and recipes from many royal banquets held during the Renaissance.

The earliest reference to Florence being associated with spinach comes from 1903 when the famous French chef, Escoffier published recipes that included spinach and Mornay sauce that he named as ala Florentine. His recipes included Sole Florentine, Eggs Florentine, and Souffle ala Florentine [2]. Other chefs followed with more dishes that included spinach and Mornay sauce, and also named them as being ala Florentine. Since then, other chefs especially in the US, continued the practice of labelling dishes with spinach and Mornay sauce as being Florentine.

Probably the recipe that nailed it was Chicken Florentine. At one time an elegant dish, but by the1950’s, in popular American cuisine it devolved into a dish made with chicken, spinach, and using a can of cream of mushroom soup as a substitute for Mornay sauce [3]. By that time the association between spinach and Florence became welded in the American mind, and the idea that any dish containing spinach must have originated in Florence.

But why did Escoffier name these spinach-based dishes ala Florentine? Perhaps he heard the story of Catherine de Medici and decided to incorporate the legend into his creations. It certainly is a nice story to base a series of recipes on, and it gives a feeling of historicity and elegance to a dish, not that Escoffier needed added elegance. His name was enough to ensure the fame of any dish he made.

The name ala Florentine has a convoluted history, with some gaping plot holes. But one thing is for certain, if you go to Italy and want a pizza with spinach on it, asking for a Florentine Pizza will only get you confused looks.

References

[1] Campanini, Antonella (2018). “The Illusive Story Of Catherine de’ Medici: A Gastronomic Myth”. The New Gastronome.

[2] Escoffier, Auguste (1907). A Guide to Modern Cookery.

[3] Campbells chicken Florentine recipe https://www.campbells.com/recipes/easy-chicken-florentine/