Terrine de canard : making the meat mixture

The meat, fish, or vegetable mixture that becomes a pâté or a terrine is called a farce in French, or a stuffing. That's because pâté originally meant what is now called pâté en croûte, or a meat stuffing in a crust — a meat pie (like a Cornish pasty). Pâté was the name for the "paste" or dough the meat was cooked in, and for the whole preparation.

The same kind of filling cooked in a baking dish, without the pastry crust, is properly called a terrine. Another difference between a pâté and a terrine is that a pâté can be served hot, while a terrine is always eaten cold. That's what the Larousse Gastronomique says. The fact is, the terms are used almost interchangeably in France today, with the redundant phrase en croûte added to distinguish one way of cooking and serving a pâté from the other.

The mixture for the terrine de canard forestière that I'm making is composed of 10 oz. of lean ground pork and an equal quantity of ground turkey (or veal), along with some chopped liver and one duck breast cut into little cubes.

I used turkey instead of veal and I'm hoping it will be good. I also used rabbit liver rather than duck, chicken, or turkey liver because that's what I found at the supermarket.

The other duck breast (the two filets weighed in at about a pound) is cut into strips that also go into the pâté mixture, but as a middle layer (more about that later). Oh, and about an ounce of shelled pistachios go in also, along with allspice, salt, pepper, and dried thyme.

A terrine needs to be fairly heavily salted because it will be eaten cold. You could certainly put in other herbs and spices, and in fact I added a pinch of cayenne pepper to my mixture.

Finally, three eggs and a tablespoon of starch (corn or potato) get mixed in. That and the ground or chopped liver give the mixture a fairly liquid texture and will give it the right texture after it's cooked. It's cooked now, but I can't try it for another couple of days...

Also, at this point it's time to put two ounces of dried mushrooms in half a cup of dry white wine to soak (separately) overnight.

The pâté mixture, including the strips of duck breast, goes into the refrigerator for 12 hours before it gets cooked in the oven. I just laid the strips of meat over the top of the mixture so that I could lift them off the next day and put them into the terrine as a middle layer.

We'll see how that looks when I slice the terrine on Thursday. The recipe says to put it into the refrigerator for three days after it's cooked to let all the flavors blend, and that's what I'm doing.

By the way, there's another word, pâtée, which is grammatically feminine, not masculine. Une pâtée is a gruel or slop of ground meat, cereals, and vegetables that is fed to farm or domestic animals. Pâtée pour chien is dog food. Isn't that funny?

This is Part 2 of the Terrine de canard series. Here are links to Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.