[Sca-cooks] what's wierd-ish, what isn't

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Huette von Ahrens:
>It is and it isn't.  I looked up "florentine"
>in the Oxford Companion to Food and discovered
>that "florentine" can mean a cookie or biscuit.
>Specifically, Pepperidge Farms. Also in Britain,
>it can mean a fruit or meat pie.

Yes, there are seventeenth-century recipes for florentines which seem 
to be one version of the tart with an edible shell, generally made 
from puff-pastry, and filled with a variety of "quelquechoses".

>   But it is from
>the French where the phrase "a la Florentine"
>means anything with spinach.  According to the
>OCF, it is believed that the Italians, or
>probably more correctly the Medici's, introduced
>spinach to France.  In the supermarkets I use and
>in a lot of restaurants here in Los Angeles, it
>is most common to see the term "florentine" to
>mean something with spinach in it.

It's worth emphasizing that this is culinary French, and almost 
certainly not a period variety of it. Beginning in the early 19th 
century (roughly), a system emerged in hotel restaurants (which were 
a new concept) and great private houses in which garnishes and 
presentations of dishes began to become somewhat standardized. Maybe 
this is the beginning of the Stouffer Kitchen, or the standardized 
fast food concept, or more likely the beginning of the level of 
organization needed to run the first real restaurants, but as the 
example of the "Florentine" dishes suggest, there are a lot of these 
name associations in the jargon of the French chef. Dishes a la 
Anglaise can be breaded and fried or served with a custardy sauce, 
dishes served a la Andalusienne tend to involve eggplants and/or bell 
peppers, Espagnole dishes require tomatoes, etc.

These appellations don't always have a whole lot to do with the 
places they name. I think my favorite are the dishes garnished a la 
Polonaise, which use a topping of buttered breadcrumbs, parsley, and 
chopped hard-boiled egg. It's actually quite good, but whether it has 
anything at all to do with Poland, I don't know.

Adamantius
-- 

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04

"Who cares what you think? ...Wait! Who do write for? Who sent you? 
Who do you write for???"
	-- The President of the United States, 07/04/01