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Foie Gras Farce

A liver-based farce made with bacon, white meat, butter, herbs, mushrooms, and egg yolk, used as a filling for pigeons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Foie Gras Farce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the liver, bacon, and white meat into dice.

Make the farce

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter or marrow fat and add the diced ingredients, bay leaves, thyme, parsley, salt, and black pepper.

  2. Fry for 5 minutes until cooked.

  3. While hot, pound the mixture to a smooth paste and sieve it.

  4. Mix in the minced mushrooms or truffles and the egg yolk.

Use

  1. Use as a filling for four pigeons.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Provides the rich, creamy body and the characteristic flavor of the farce.
Fat bacon
Adds fat that keeps the farce moist and carries flavor during frying.
White meat
Supplies lean protein that gives the farce its firm, body-forming structure.
Butter or marrow fat
Adds richness and helps the diced ingredients brown and cook evenly in the pan.
Raw egg yolk
Acts as a binder that helps the smooth paste hold together.

The step that matters

Pounding and sieving while hot. Pounding the cooked mixture while it is still hot breaks it into a smooth paste, and sieving removes fibers and lumps. Letting it cool first makes it stiff and grainy, and the raw egg yolk should only be mixed in once the mixture has cooled slightly so it does not scramble.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, meat, butter, thyme, pepper, mushroom, egg):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, meat, butter, thyme, pepper, mushroom, egg. 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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