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Pâté De Foie Gras Sandwich No. 3
One-half cup of pâté de foie gras, remove the fat and mash to a smooth paste; season with a little salt and a dash of cayenne pepper and drop of onion juice; press the whole through a sieve. Spread on thin slices of buttered white bread and cover with another slice of buttered bread. Garnish top with slices of hardboiled egg and an olive.
A five-minute spread that lives or dies on the texture of the pâté. Everything here is about getting it smooth and seasoning it lightly enough that the liver still tastes like liver.
- What to buyThe recipe assumes a tinned or crocked terrine sealed under a cap of rendered fat, which is what "remove the fat" refers to. A modern bloc de foie gras works the same way; a mousse or parfait is already smooth and needs no sieving, though it is softer and will soak the bread faster.
- Don't discard the fatThe fat scraped off the top is worth keeping. It is excellent for frying eggs or potatoes, and a teaspoon of it worked back into the paste loosens it if the pâté is stiff and crumbly.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on the fine side of a box grater and press the pulp in your fingers or a small sieve; a drop or two is all this quantity wants. Chopped onion is not a substitute — the point is aroma without texture or bite.
- Pressing through a sieveUse a fine-mesh sieve and the back of a soup spoon or a rubber spatula. Have the pâté at cool room temperature; straight from the refrigerator it will not go through, and fully soft it turns greasy.
- CayenneA dash here is an unmeasured very small amount, a pinch at most. Foie gras is delicate and already salted in the making, so taste before adding any salt at all.
- The breadThin-sliced white sandwich bread, crusts trimmed, butter spread thinly right to the edges. The butter acts as a moisture barrier as much as a flavour; without it the fat soaks into the crumb.
- The garnishSlices of hard-boiled egg and an olive sit on top of a closed sandwich, which suggests it was meant to be presented rather than eaten out of hand: cut into fingers or rounds and set out on a plate, with the garnish pinned through with a cocktail pick. Assemble no more than an hour ahead and keep covered and cold.
- YieldHalf a cup of paste covers roughly four to six sandwiches of standard-loaf bread, or a couple of dozen small cut canapés.
American sandwich manuals of the 1900s ran to dozens of fillings, and foie gras appears here as No. 3. Strasbourg was long known for its potted goose liver, and by the time this book was compiled a small crock of imported pâté was a delicatessen item an ambitious hostess could buy rather than make — which is precisely why the recipe spends its instructions on sieving and seasoning rather than on the liver itself. The hard-boiled egg and olive garnish is the standard finishing vocabulary of the period's tea-table and card-party food, applied here to make a bought paste look composed. Foie gras production and sale are restricted in a number of jurisdictions today, so availability varies by where you live.