Eggs à la Florentine

Œufs à la Florentine (eggs on buttered spinach under Mornay) teaches one precise lesson: control the water before you control the heat. Spinach that still holds its cooking liquid thins the sauce, delays the eggs, and prevents the bronzed glaze that defines the dish. Cook it in butter until the leaves are tender, glossy, and quite dry.

The original entry assumed a saucier with Mornay ready, individual service dishes, and a fierce oven capable of cooking the eggs while glazing their sauce. At home, the sauce remains a separate finished preparation, but a preheated metal sheet supplies fierce heat underneath while the broiler supplies it above. Making sauce during egg service was brigade scaffolding and can go; buttered spinach, grated cheese, raw eggs, Mornay, and simultaneous cooking and glazing are the dish, so every one stays. Four portions, one cook, one stove, one evening.

When the timing lands, the Mornay is ivory beneath scattered bronze, the spinach remains distinctly green, the whites are set, and the yolks yield softly when the spoon enters. Before you break a single egg, look at the spinach pan: its floor must be dry.