174 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



louse, etc., in geese. Their livers in pates and in ter- 

 rines with truffles are consumed all over Europe. Geese 

 are dressed in many ways in different countries for 

 Michaelmas and Christmas; the fillets and pectoral 

 muscles salted and smoked serve instead of ham ; the 

 thighs cooked and covered with the grease keep well. 



There are consumed annually in Paris about 1 50 tons 

 of foie gras and truffled poultry, 30 tons of patds of 

 Amiens, Ohartres, and Pithiviers, and 539 tons of other 

 pates. At Pau they boil down the geese for their fat 

 but do not eat them. 



In preparing the enlarged goose livers, when the 

 birds are considered ripe they are killed, and the livers 

 are conveyed to the truffling house. The carcases, 

 shrivelled out of all knowledge, are sold for about Is. 

 apiece to the peasants, who make soup of them. The 

 livers are first cleaned and then weighed, and they will 

 often scale two and a-half to three pounds each. The next 

 step is to take each liver and to lard it with truffles in the 

 proportion of half-a-pound of truffles to one pound of liver, 

 and then to convey it to an icehouse, where it remains 

 on a marble slab for a week, that the truffle perfume 

 may thoroughly permeate it. At the end of a week each 

 liver being removed is cut into the size required for the 

 pot which it is to fill, and introduced into that pot 

 between two thin layers of mincemeat made of the 

 finest veal and bacon fat, both truffled with the liver 

 itself, and one inch depth of the whitish lard is then 

 spread over the whole that none of the savour may 

 escape in baking. The baking takes about five hours, 

 and the fire must never blaze too high or sink too low. 

 When the cooking is over, nothing remains but to pack 

 the dainty either in tin, earthenware, or wood, according 

 as it may be needed for home or foreign consumption, 

 and to ship it to the four points of the compass. 



Enormous flocks of geese are bred in Lincolnshire, 

 containing from 2,000 to 10,000 birds each ; but it is to 

 Norfolk and Suffolk that we look for goose-management 

 on the largest and most economical scale. The goose 



