Pâtés, rillettes, foie gras and confit

Pâtés, rillettes, foie gras and confit (also terrines, French potted meats) are French preparations of duck, goose and pork liver and meat that keep for months or even years in a jar or can. The trick is heat inside a sealed container: it destroys microbes, while fat and low moisture stop them from coming back.

Before it reaches a shop, a jar of sterilised foie gras sits in storage for at least another month. The Label Rouge specification LA 19/02 demands it, so that the seasoning can travel right to the core. The jar must be heated within 3 hours of packing, up to 106 °C. The gentler mi-cuit and semi-conserve only go to 80–85 °C.

Each product starts from its own raw material. Foie gras is the liver of a force-fed duck or goose. Poultry-liver pâté under Label Rouge LA 01/16 holds at least 50 % liver, 32 % pork throat and 5 % shoulder, and is minced and sterilised in glass jars. For rillettes, pork is cooked slowly in its own fat, while confit means duck or goose legs and wings rubbed with dry salt and cooked in the fat of the same bird. Salt, fat and temperature are what hold it all together.

An FAO manual puts the difference simply. A conserve is heated above 100 °C, usually to 110–121 °C at the core, and needs no fridge. A pasteurised product has seen about 80 °C, so it lives in the cold and not for long. Fresh Rillettes de Tours in a pot, for instance, are kept at 0–4 °C for no more than 29 days, while the same rillettes in a sterilised jar sit in the cupboard.

Storing meat under fat is an old habit: farms in south-west France kept goose this way from the 17th century, and late in the 19th century local factories put confit and foie gras into cans. The word «rillette» entered the Bescherelle dictionary in 1845. The French today mostly pick the softer option: in 2024 mi-cuit made up 67 % of household foie gras purchases, conserve 23 % and raw liver 11 %, according to FranceAgriMer.

People mix up rillettes and pâté, yet rillettes show their fibres: in Tours the meat is cut into pieces of at least 6 × 6 cm and never minced, while pâté goes through a grid of 8 mm or more. Under decree 93-999, foie gras means only liver and seasoning, whereas a foie gras «mousse» or «galantine» needs just 50 %. Confit, meanwhile, sits in the jar in whole pieces on the bone.

On the label, look for one of three words: «conserve», «semi-conserve» or «mi-cuit». A conserve carries a best-before date (DDM); a pasteurised, chilled product carries a use-by date (DLC). CIFOG advises keeping a conserve at 10–15 °C for several years and mi-cuit at 2–4 °C for up to 6 months; once opened, eat it within 4–5 days.

This shelf belongs to Cured meats & charcuterie, and next to it you will find what Curing of meat produces: Dry-cured sausages and Dry-cured hams and shoulders. Each product has its own page: Foie gras, Confit and Rillettes.

Why this matters to you: one word on the jar, «conserve» or «mi-cuit», decides where it lives, for years in the cupboard or for a few months in the fridge.