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The term forcemeat—from the French farcir, to stuff—means ground or pureed meat, fish, or vegetables. Forcemeats for pâtés are traditionally divided into four categories, each of which denotes a specific technique: country, gratin, straight, and mousseline.

For a country pâté, the meat is not pureed, but ground for a coarse texture. The word gratin here indicates that some or all of the meat has been seared over high heat and cooled before being combined with the rest of the ingredients, adding the roasted flavor to a pâté that will otherwise only be gently cooked. For a straight forcemeat, uncooked pork, pork fat, and often some other meat—duck or venison or rabbit—are ground, mixed and pureed in a food processor. And a mousseline forcemeat is one made by pureeing ground chicken, veal, or fish with egg white and cream. It’s very stable and the easiest to make at home.

Escoffier believed that any type of meat could be well served by the mousseline method, which results in a forcemeat that, in terms of delicacy, he said, “cannot be surpassed.” (And that was back in the day when cooks pounded the meat by hand and laboriously pushed it through a sieve before stirring in the egg white and cream.)

The main stages in preparing an excellent pâté (as with sausage making), are seasoning, grinding, mixing, testing for seasoning, and cooking. The meat, fat, and seasonings are ground, then either blended in an electric mixer or pureed in a food processor. Some “interior garnish,” such as nuts, mushrooms, or herbs, may be folded in for texture, flavor and visual impact, then the mixture is baked in a water bath or poached, and chilled.

SEASONING

The chunks of meat and fat are always seasoned well in advance, to allow the seasoning to do its work, and refrigerated. The first and last stages of most cooking, and all the way in between, are seasoning. Seasoning is the critical factor in a finished pâté. Because pâtés are served cold, the seasoning must be aggressive.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TEMPERATURE

Once you are ready to grind your meat and fat, temperature becomes a critical factor in the success of a terrine, and it will remain a factor until the terrine goes into the oven. In order to combine the meat and fat perfectly, they must be very cold. If they become warm, the fat can soften or melt, and ultimately you can wind up with a broken forcemeat, just as you can wind up with a broken hollandaise, if you don’t pay attention to temperature.

GRINDING

Except for that in a mousseline forcemeat, all meat for pâtés and terrines is passed through a meat grinder. Usually the finest die is appropriate, but some cooks prefer to grind first through a large die, then a smaller one (a process technically called progressive grinding). If you are looking for a more rustic terrine, as with the pâté de campagne, you might choose to grind some of your meat only through the large die.

Until your pâté goes into the oven, you must do all that you can to keep the meat cold. Don’t let your ingredients and tools get warm. You don’t have to be fanatical about it—moving your KitchenAid out on the back deck in February snow—but do be slightly paranoid about it. Chill your grinder attachment in the freezer for an hour or more before grinding. When not working with any of the ingredients, keep them refrigerated. Set the bowl that will catch the ground meat in a larger bowl of ice. It’s handy to use the mixer bowl to catch the meat because often that’s where it needs to be for the next step; also, metal conducts the cold well, as opposed to plastic, which doesn’t.

If, you need to stop after grinding for whatever reason, return the meat to the refrigerator or freezer until you’re ready to proceed. If you use the freezer, though, don’t let the meat freeze solid—crunchy is acceptable, but not frozen solid.

MIXING

For forcemeats that aren’t pureed in a food processor (as those for most pâtés are), such as most sausage forcemeats, mixing the ground meat for a minute or two using the paddle attachment