Pâté is not just made with foie gras, but can be made with a variety of meats or vegetables. It can be served as a loaf or in a pastry crust, as a terrine, or used as a stuffing. Spices, herbs, and wine are often added for flavor.
When you read the word pâté, you can automatically assume that the food in question is foie gras pâté, a dish used with finely chopped or finely ground goose or duck liver. Foie gras is certainly a popular form of pâté, but it’s not the only form. You can use a variety of meats and not just liver to make pates, roughly translated as pasta, and some recipes are even completely vegetarian.
If you look on the internet, recipes abound and include the use of meats such as pork, ground beef, chicken, and sausages. Various parts of an animal can be used, so you can choose those flavors in the meat that you prefer. Veggie pates can be finely ground beans, mushrooms, or other vegetables that suit a mushy grind and, when seasoned, can provide a wonderful flavor.
Typically, pate can be served on its own in two different ways. A loaf of finely chopped, dense ingredients can be surrounded by flaky or tart pastry and baked to a crispy brown. This is called pâté en croute. You can also serve en croute variants in pie dishes, and the loaf or pie is usually cut into loaf slices or pie wedges for consumption.
Another method of preparation is to shape the glued meat into a loaf and, in some cases, surround it with gelatin, aspic or meat fat. This is typically called a terrine and can be served in slices alongside the bread so that the mixture can be spread out. Alternatively, the terrines could be used in slices to make sandwiches. A similar concept is the German-based liverwurst, which is sold in tubes and widely available in many countries.
Numerous spices, herbs, wine and sometimes a few vegetables add flavor to patés. When served as a spread, ingredients should be capable of being ground into a paste form, sometimes with the addition of liquids to achieve spreadability. For example, many forms of American meatloaf might resemble a terrine but are too hard to spread, although excellent when served sliced for sandwiches or served warm.
Another method of serving pate is to use it to stuff other cuts of meat. In this form it is often called forcemeat, since much of it is filled with meat such as chicken, goose or turkey, and some forms of fish. Forcemeat need not be “stuffed” per se, but can instead simply refer to pâté when served in a variety of other forms.
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