Skip to content

Swiss Patés

A historical recipe from Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea, by Marion Harland (1875).

A historical recipe

Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea, by Marion Harland (1875). Project Gutenberg eBook #49944.

From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards.

Source and licence

From Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea, by Marion Harland (1875). Digitised by Project Gutenberg, eBook #49944 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49944). Public domain in the USA; its status may differ elsewhere.

Read the original Public domain in the USA

What was changed: As printed, from the book's text; Project Gutenberg's header and licence removed. Ingredient lines were read out of the text by a program. A historical recipe, not current advice.

Switzerland. Associated with Switzerland by a demonym leading its title: Swiss (confidence 0.55). "Associated with" means only that the evidence named here links this recipe to that place. A recipe isn't labelled as representing an entire country because a source associates it with one, and regional origins are kept where the source gives them.

Create an image with FoodStudio Made by our AI generator from your own prepaid SecondMem credits. We keep no picture from the source.

Method

  1. Some slices of stale bread.
  2. A little good dripping or very sweet lard mixed with the same quantity of butter.
  3. Two or three eggs beaten light.
  4. Very fine cracker-crumbs.
  5. Minced fowl or veal mixed with white sauce, and well seasoned.
  6. Cut thick slices of stale bread—baker’s bread is best—into rounds with a cake-cutter.
  7. With a smaller cutter extract a piece from the middle of each round, taking care not to let the sharp tin go quite through the bread, but leaving enough in the cavity to serve as a bottom to the paté.
  8. Dip the hollowed piece of bread in the beaten egg, sift the pulverized cracker over it, and fry in the dripping, or lard and butter, to a delicate brown.
  9. Drain every drop of fat from it.
  10. Arrange upon a hot dish when all are done, heap up with the “mince,” and eat without delay.
  11. Devilled crab or lobster is nice served in this style.
  12. Bread patés are a convenience when the housekeeper has not time to spare for pastry-making.
  13. You can, if you like, fry them without the egg or cracker;
  14. but most persons would esteem them too rich.