it actually is an omelette for sure, but I agree with the writer that eggs Florentine sounds cooler

[cimorene]

Something I read recently - I think a vintage women's magazine from the 20s, but I'm not positive - mentioned "eggs Florentine". I did a quick web search, not having heard of this before, and learned that this, also called a Florentine omelette, is an omelette with cheese (traditionally swiss or gruyere) and spinach filling. Dishes named "Florentine" often have spinach in them, apparently. I found a recipe to try, because I love spinach dishes, and we had it for dinner today with bread rolls. I made the filling with pepper gouda and a bit of parmesan because that's the cheese we had, and it came out great!

Now Wax is baking an almond layer cake with lemon curd buttercream because her favorite aunt is coming to stay on Monday. She asked me what kind of cake, and almond layer cake with vanilla was my suggestion. I subsequently remembered I've been craving carrot cake and she said she'd make one of those too, but we'll have to buy cream cheese first.

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[cimorene]

So now I wonder if it's ever the same as the omelette at all and the first few results were just wrong😂 but I'm glad I read the omelette first anyway! I couldn't achieve the sandwich without a lot more work than I typically put into any meal, or substituting different bread I guess, but none of the breads I can buy would be very much like English muffins.

I did a few more searches and read more about the history though, trying to find out why it's called Florentine, and learned that nobody actually knows and there's a popular story about Catherine de Medici that has been (probably?) debunked. And that the oldest known X Florentine dish of this type is apparently chicken Florentine, which sounds really good and now I'm going to try that too.

Also that it experienced a surge in popularity in America in midcentury resulting in the most common version of the recipe today using cream sauce because apparently bechamel ("moray") is too hard... and a lot of "easy" versions in midcentury that used cream of mushroom soup instead of moray sauce, which made me laugh and explains why a nonzero fraction of modern recipes still include mushrooms.