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Mincemeat for Pâté De Foie Gras

A mincemeat of calves' liver, shallot, bacon fat, veal, garlic, and optional truffle trimmings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and veal match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

Mincemeat for Pâté De Foie Gras

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liver mixture

  1. Melt the bacon fat in a frying pan.

  2. Rub the pan with garlic.

  3. Add the minced shallot and diced calves' liver; fry until cooked.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Pound and finish

  1. Pound the liver mixture with the cold veal in a mortar.

  2. If using, add minced truffle trimmings for extra flavor.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Liver + vealtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  2. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Calves' liver
Forms the main body of the mixture, giving it a rich, soft texture when pounded.
Bacon fat
Cooks the liver and shallot in a fat that carries flavor and keeps them moist.
Cold veal
Adds body and helps the pounded mixture hold together as a smooth paste.

The step that matters

Fry the liver until cooked, then cool it fully before pounding. Liver overcooks quickly and turns grainy and dry if fried too long. Cooling it before pounding with the cold veal keeps the paste smooth and prevents the fat from melting out and separating.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, shallot, veal, garlic, truffle):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, shallot, veal, garlic, truffle. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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