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Goose Liver Paté

A pâté made from goose livers, calf tongue, butter, spices, and stock, cooled and stored in buttered jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Goose Liver Paté

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the livers

  1. Soak the goose livers in milk for 6‑8 hours, being careful not to break the gall bladders.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter, add the livers, cover, and cook gently until nearly done without browning.

  3. Boil the calf’s tongue separately until cooked, then skin and cut it into small shapes.

Make the pâté

  1. Let the goose livers cool, then pound them in a mortar with butter, cayenne, black pepper, nutmeg, cloves, salt, store sauce, mustard, and boiling stock.

  2. Pack the mixture lightly into buttered jars, cover, and place in a cool oven for 30 minutes.

Finish and store

  1. Once cooled, cover with clarified butter and store in a cool place.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Goose livers
Provide the main body and rich flavour of the pâté once pounded smooth.
Butter
Cooks the livers gently and adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture.
Calf’s tongue
Adds meaty texture and body to the pâté.
Mustard
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the liver and butter.

The step that matters

Cooking the livers gently without browning. High heat browns and toughens liver proteins and can make the pâté bitter and grainy; cooking gently until just nearly done keeps it smooth and mild.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, pepper, nutmeg, clove, sauce, mustard):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, pepper, nutmeg, clove, sauce, mustard. 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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