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Imitation Pate De Foies Gras
(France.) The French make an excellent liver pie, cheaper than those of geese livers made in Strasburg. Parboil and drain a fine tender calf's liver, chop it very fine, discarding all tough bits, and adding as much cold boiled beef tongue, free from skin and fat, which must be cut into dice, 1 dozen mushrooms, also cut up, salt, pepper, parsley, and 2 onions minced and fried in butter. Line a dish with puff paste, fill with these, after it has been baked ten minutes to color it, and first adding 3 eggs, well beaten. Strips of pie-crust can be laid on top. Bake it one hour. Serve cold.
The instructions arrive slightly out of order: the pastry shell is partly baked before it is filled, and the beaten eggs go into the meat mixture, not the crust. Read it as a bound liver terrine baked in pastry and served cold.
- Sequence, straightened outLine the dish with pastry and bake it about 10 minutes to set and color it. Meanwhile mix the chopped liver, diced tongue, mushrooms, fried onion and seasoning, stir in the 3 beaten eggs, then fill the part-baked shell and bake for the full hour.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. Use around 425F for the initial blind-baking of the shell, then about 350F for the hour-long bake with the filling.
- Parboiling the liverSimmer a whole calf's liver 8-10 minutes in salted water only until it firms enough to chop cleanly, then drain and cool. It finishes in the oven, so boiling it through leaves the filling grainy and dry.
- Calf's liverSold at good butchers; it is milder and finer-textured than beef liver. If substituting, use pork liver rather than beef or lamb, which will dominate everything else in the pie.
- Boiled tongueCooked beef tongue is now a special order at most counters. Ready-cooked, peeled tongue is sold vacuum-packed at delis and Latin and Eastern European groceries; use a weight of tongue equal to the weight of the liver, as the recipe directs.
- MushroomsA dozen mushrooms is probably small buttons, roughly 6-8 oz. Sauté them with the onions to drive off their water, or the filling will weep and soften the pastry base.
- PastryPuff paste for the lining, with strips of ordinary pie crust latticed over the top, is the original scheme. A single all-butter shortcrust for both is more forgiving under a wet filling and easier to slice cold.
- Doneness and yieldThe filling is set when the center reaches 160F. No dish size is given; the quantity of filling is large, so expect to need a deep dish and to get generous first-course servings. Chill it thoroughly before cutting; served warm it falls apart.
The Strasbourg pâté this recipe undercuts was already a luxury export by the nineteenth century, sold in sealed tins and terrines and priced accordingly, which is why cookbooks of the period carry "mock" and "imitation" versions built from calf's liver instead of the fattened goose liver of Alsace. What is described here is closer to a pâté en croûte than to a smooth potted foie gras: chopped rather than pounded, bound with egg, studded with diced tongue, and baked in pastry to be sliced cold, in the manner of a charcutier's counter terrine. Dice of pale tongue through dark liver also gives a cut slice something to look at.