Expensive spicy meat paste: pate'

Belgian pate'
Originally uploaded by trudeau

Pâté is a mixture of ground meat and fat minced into a spreadable paste. Common additions include vegetables, herbs, spices, and wine.

In French or Belgian cuisine, pâté may be baked in a crust as pie or loaf, in which case it is called pâté en croûte or baked in a terrine (or other mold), in which case it is known as pâté en terrine.

The most famous pâté is probably pâté de foie gras, made from the fattened livers of geese. Foie gras entier is fattened goose liver cooked and sliced, not made into pâté.

In the Netherlands, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Sweden and Austria, some liver pâtés are shaped as a soft, often spreadable sausage, called leverworst (Dutch), májpástétom/májkrém (Hungarian), or Leberwurst (German). In the United States these are sometimes called "liverwurst" (mixing English and German), or braunschweiger.