[Sca-cooks] Pate history - OOP(?)

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Daniel Myers:
>Ok, pate had been mentioned on one of the 
>threads on the list and it got me thinking 
>(Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!).  Here's what 
>I've found after a (very) brief search.
>
>At first glance, goose liver pate does not 
>appear to be period.  This was the only decent 
>historic reference I've come across (anyone with 
>OED access or the like is invited to chime in 
>here):
>
>From  http://homecooking.about.com/library/weekly/aa121701a.htm
>"The practice of force-feeding geese to enlarge 
>their livers dates back to at least 400 B.C.. 
>Egyptian hieroglyphics depict slaves 
>force-feeding geese to enlarge the livers. 
>French chef Jean-Joseph Clause is credited for 
>creating and popularizing pâté de foie gras in 
>1779. Chef Clause's culinary genius was rewarded 
>a gift of twenty pistols by King Louis XVI , and 
>he obtained a patent for the dish in 1784. He 
>went on to begin his own business specializing 
>in supplying pâté to the gentry. By 1827, 
>Strasberg was known as the goose-liver capital 
>of the world."
>
>With all due respect to french chefs, I'm 
>interested in the fact that the practice of 
>fattening goose livers goes back so far beyond 
>pate.  So I did a quick cookbook search of goose 
>recipes and found some interesting hints.
>
>From: Forme of Cury
>"Gees In Hoggepot. XXXI. Take Gees and smyte hem 
>on pecys. cast hem in a Pot do [th]erto half 
>wyne and half water. and do [th]erto a gode 
>quantite of Oynouns and erbest. Set it ouere the 
>fyre and couere it fast. make a layour of brede 
>and blode an lay it [th]erwith. do [th]erto 
>powdour fort and serue it fort. "

This is a general hint, and not a liver recipe, I gather, huh?

>
>From: Le Menagier de Paris (Janet Hinson, trans.)
>"Item, in Paris the goose-sellers fatten their 
>geese on wheat-flour, not the finest flour nor 
>bran, but that which falls between the two, 
>namely fine or double-milled: and to this flour 
>they add an equal amount of oats, and mix it 
>together with a little water, and this holds 
>together like a paste, and they put this food in 
>a four-legged feeding-trough, and nearby, water 
>and litter fresh each day, and in fifteen days 
>they are fat. And note that the litter enables 
>them to keep their feathers clean."
>
>... and ...
>
>"To Fatten A Goose In Three Days, feed it on 
>warm bread crumbs soaked in buttermilk."

Two things to consider are A) that I'm not sure 
how long geese destined for foie gras are 
fattened (there's fat and then there's _FAT_), 
and B) that foie gras has a decidedly different 
character from ordinary liver; we're talking so 
fat that it actually firms up like butter when 
chilled.

>
>There were also a good number of recipes for 
>blood pudding that included goose livers.

Hmmm. Now those I haven't seen. Would you care to 
post one, or refer us to a source?

>So I interpret this all to mean that there was 
>no "official" goose liver pate, but there may or 
>may not have been pate-like foods made from 
>(among other things) goose liver.

Why am I thinking there may be a liver pie in the Italian corpus?

>Pure speculation:  I can imagine making a pie 
>out of chopped goose livers in order to preserve 
>them for a bit.  An inedible crust would keep 
>the bacteria out after it was cooked and the fat 
>content would also help preserve it.  I'll have 
>a look through Vivendier, Viandier, and Chiquart 
>later tonight if I get the chance.

Maybe whole livers in some kind of substrate, 
also. Yes, fat / air exclusion is pretty much the 
way to go for all cultures seeking to preserve 
livers (traditionally eaten fresh at slaughtering 
time) before artificial refrigeration was used.

I wonder if perhaps there's some reason (maybe to 
do with poultry husbandry, if such a science is 
definable), like, say, the introduction of a 
different breed of goose to France that made a 
difference. It may simply be that what we would 
recognize as foie gras today was not produced in 
period in spite of whatever methods were employed 
to fatten geese.

I mean, wine was produced in the Champagne 
region, and presumably had been for centuries 
before the advent of Dom Perignon, and I gather 
that certain technological advances of the period 
were what made his contribution possible. It may 
be a similar deal with foie gras; maybe the 
concept of a five-pound goose liver, for all its 
fattening, simply didn't exist before the 
eighteenth century.

Adamantius