Fwd: Re: [Sca-cooks] pate

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Good morning, the list! I noticed that my mail settings have been a
little off the past day or two, and a couple of posts to this list
haven't gone through to the list, only to individuals. Which wouldn't
be a problem, but since this topic is still going on, I might as
well...

>Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 07:13:15 -0500
>To: Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net>
>From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
>Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] pate

>>Phlip said:
>>>  You notice, the Yuppies
>>>  have changed the name of any liver presentation to
>>>  "pate" so they think they're eating something uncommon
>>>  and elegant....
>>
>>So, do all pates have liver in them? If not, what is the
>>differance between a "pate" and a "spread"?
>
>Stefan, you've been the victim of a hoax perpetrated by said
>Yuppies, or an extension of that hoax wherein all spreadable things
>that aren't peanut butter are called pate. Pate is not, or at least
>was not originally a spread, not even when Russell Baker referred to
>eating pate de fruits de nuts de Georgia in "Francs and Beans".
>
>Okay. Breathe, Adamantius. Charcuterie in one easy paragraph. Not
>too difficult. Apart from sausages and cured meats like ham, you
>have, in addition, various other odds and ends, many of which
>include liver. Liver is presented (in classical French cookery,
>which I mention because you can't very well discuss pate outside a
>French perspective, unless you're talking about Tom Sawyer and The
>Master's Gilded Pate) in three basic, fairly common forms: you have
>terrines, which are a sort of meat loaf baked in a ceramic vessel
>called a terrine, as in, foie de porc en terrine, or something like
>that. Sometimes terrines (the meat) are wrapped in caul fat or bacon
>before going into the terrine (the vessel). Or, you can take your
>meatloaf-y thing, and either a) cook it and take it out of the
>terrine and then wrap it in pastry and bake it until the pastry is
>done, or b) put your raw ingredients inside the pastry and bake it
>until it's all done. Then, because you've used pastry or paste
>(dough, a.k.a. pate in French), you have  a pate. For the most part,
>the spreads you refer to as pate are either mousses, cooked with
>whipped cream and/or beaten eggs to lighten their texture, or pate
>de foie gras, made of the livers of fattened geese or ducks, and
>bearing very little resemblance to other kinds of liver, and which,
>after cooking, are soft and delicate enough to spread, which may be
>part of the source of the confusion. Only by a very liberal
>extension are things like chopped liver, mushroom spread, and potted
>crab known as pate: it's sort of like the modern real-world
>equivalent of backwards documentation -- we're using a word that
>resembles a word we know, even though that is not what the word
>means.
>
>So, not all pates have liver in them (many of them are pies
>containing whatever the cook wants to include), and the difference
>between a pate and a spread is that while you can spread some pates,
>not all pates are spreads, unless you like to spread pie on a
>cracker... ;-)
>
>Adamantius, fascinated to note that Eudora's annoying spell-check
>and flame-check feature has tagged the word "whipped" as used above
>(and here) as potentially offensive.


--