Eggs Florentine
Poached eggs on wilted spinach and a toasted muffin under blender hollandaise. The hollandaise takes ninety seconds and cannot split, which removes the only difficult part.
Photograph credit: Eggs Benedict Florentine - Pasadena, CA by Daderot · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Hand-made hollandaise splits because the butter goes in faster than the yolk lecithin can emulsify it, or because the yolks scramble over direct heat. A blender fixes both: the blades break the butter into droplets small enough to stay suspended, and pouring the butter in hot cooks the yolks to a safe temperature without a pan. For the eggs, the vinegar in the poaching water lowers the pH and helps the white set fast, and a shallow whirlpool wraps the white around its own yolk.
Photograph credit: Eggs Florentine - Ala's Cafe 2024-01-21 by Andy Li · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
How to Make Eggs Florentine
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Melt the 175 g of butter until it is hot and foaming — it should be well above 80°C / 176°F, hot enough to cook the yolks on contact.
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Put the yolks, lemon juice, mustard, salt and cayenne in a blender and blitz for 15 seconds.
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With the motor running, pour the hot butter in a slow, thin stream through the lid. After about 45 seconds it will be thick, pale and glossy. Leave it in the blender jug somewhere warm.
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Melt the 20 g of butter in a wide pan, add the garlic for 30 seconds, then the spinach in handfuls, stirring until it has all wilted.
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Season with the nutmeg and a pinch of salt, then tip into a sieve and press the liquid out firmly. Wet spinach makes a wet muffin.
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Bring a wide pan of water to a bare simmer and add the vinegar. Crack each egg into a small cup first, and slide them in one at a time.
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Poach 3 minutes for a set white and a runny yolk. Lift out with a slotted spoon onto kitchen paper.
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Divide the spinach between the toasted muffin halves, set a poached egg on each, spoon the hollandaise over and scatter with chives.
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A Few Pointers
- The butter must be hot, not warm. Warm butter gives you a thin sauce that never sets.
- Crack each egg into a cup first. It costs ten seconds and saves the broken one from ruining the pan.
- If the hollandaise thickens too much while it waits, blitz in a teaspoon of warm water.
Common Substitutions & Variations
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
- A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.
Pairs Well With
A glass of cold Champagne · Smoked salmon, for Eggs Royale · Black coffee
Storage
Assemble to order. Hollandaise does not keep or reheat; make it in the ninety seconds before you need it.
Eggs Florentine Nutrition
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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