Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1877 — How Pate de Foie Gras is Made. [ARTICLE]

How Pate de Foie Gras is Made.

If any of our readers feel disposed to order pate de foie gras from his grocer after reading the following description of how the article is produced, as given in the Pall Mall Gazette, we will give him credit for haying a very strong stomach. We enter one of the most famous factories in Strassburg. A cool yard greets us, and a bland Frenchman, who has become Germanized, like hifi geese, by the force of circumstances, points to some hundreds of feathered bipeds huddled together in a corner. Their proprietor explains that they are all nine months old, and have cost him, lean ss they are, about two francs fifty centimes aplecer; he then makes a sign to half a dozen barearmed girls, and - six geese are collared and borne away to a cellar, half underground, where wide aad sloping stone tables are arranged in tiers- In the murky light it becomes apparent that hundreds of geese are already lying strapped on their backs and gasping on the upper tiers. Our business being for the mo-' meat at the lower tables, the six girls each takes her goose, lays l\im gently but firmly on the stone, and then ties down his wings, body and legs tight with plaited whipcord, the legs and wings being well spread out. The bird’s neck is left free, and it seems that during the first three days he makes a violent use of it; but afterward he may be trusted to lie still for the next seven weeks; that is, till the hour of release and killing. On the upper tiers are birds who have been lying for three, five or six weeks respectively, waiting to be fed by half-a dozan other girls laden with wooden bowls. Each of these bowls is filled with a thick white paste, made of parboiled maize; chestnuts and buckwheat; and the inode of administering tho dinner is for the girl to catch the goose by the beck, open his bill with a little squeeze, and then pat three or four balls of paste down his throat with her middle finger. This is done six times per day. But now we have done with the women, for a man climbs upon the topmost tier of all, and proceeds to examine the birds who may be “ ripe.” He has an eye as judicious as that of a gardener inspecting melons; and his is

the responsible task of pronouncing what ‘ birds would die of a natural death within twenty-four hours If not dtojitched beforehand. If a goose dies of natural death it la good for nothing. He must be unstrapped and executed at the precise psychological moment when nature is growing tired of supporting him, and the knack of detect* ing that moment can only come of long practice. This Inspector has not been a minute on the table before be certifies four geese ready for the slaughter- AU four of them have stomachs of the size of pumpkins, and it is a since** relief to these when a couple of men climb np f loose their bonds and bear them oat of the cellar to a pent-boose across the yard, full of knives and chopping-blocks. A click with the shopper on the neck of each, a rip with the knife, and in lew than five minutes after their transfer the carcasses ot the four victim* are lying in a heap, while ibeir livers are being conveyed with all respect and care to the truffling-house. The carcasses, shriveled ont of all knowledge, are sold for about eightpeoce apiece to peasants, who make soap of them; the livers are first cleaned, then put to scale, and our four geese are declared fine birds, for their liven weigh from two and a hair to three pounds each. The next step is to take each liver and lard it with truffles in the proportion of one-half pound of truffles to one pound of liver, and then to convey it to an icehouse, where it remains on a marble slab fer a week, that the truffle perfume may thoroughly permeate it At the end of a week, each liver, being removed, is cut into the sice required For the pot which it is to fill, and introduced into that pot between two thin layers of mince-meat mad* of the finest veal and baoon fat, both truffled like the liver itself; and one inch depth of the whitish lard is then spread over the whole, that none of the savor may escape in baking. When the cooking is over, it is packed and shipped to the four ? >ints of the compass.—Aural Ufa# orker. ,