Looking for the perfect Easter appetizer recipe? This year, we are making an authentic French Easter Pie, also known as Pâté de Pâques! This traditional specialty from central France is a stunning meat pie made with flaky puff pastry, a savory pork and mushroom forcemeat, and whole hardboiled eggs hidden right inside.
When you slice into this Easter pie, you get a beautiful visual effect with the whole egg sliced which the signature look of that recipe.
In this video, I’ll walk you through how to make Pâté de Pâques step-by-step, including essential “Charcuterie 101” tips so your meat mixture stays perfectly moist and your puff pastry turns out beautifully golden.
PRINTABLE RECIPE CARD ➡️
https://www.thefrenchcookingacademy.com/recipes/pate-de-pques
🛒 INGREDIENTS :
• 1 sheet/roll of Puff Pastry (defrosted and kept cold)
• 500g Meat (Pork belly & pork fillet for the perfect fat-to-lean ratio. Substitutes: Veal, chicken, or beef)
• 20ml Madeira wine (can substitute with Cognac or Port)
• 1-2 tbsp Dried Morel or Porcini mushrooms (rehydrated)
• 1 Shallot
• Fresh Parsley
• 20g Butter
• 3 Eggs (boiled for exactly 7 minutes, plus 1 extra for the egg wash)
• Salt & Pepper (to taste)
• ½ tsp Sugar
USEFUL TIPS:
1️⃣ The Marinade: For the best flavor, season your meat with salt, pepper, and Madeira wine, and let it rest in the fridge overnight before grinding.
2️⃣ The key to a good forcemeat: Beat slowly with paddle attachment using a stand mixer. This binds the fat and lean meat together to create the perfect texture for your pate
3️⃣ Resting Time: Once baked, let the pie rest for 30-40 minutes before slicing. If you cut it while it’s too hot, it will be soggy hard to cut and the force meat will feel dry.
⏱️ RECIPE CHAPTERS (Skip to your favorite part!):
0:00 – What is a French Pâté de Pâques?
0:41 – Ingredients you need for this Easter Pie
1:20 – Charcuterie 101: Marinating the Meat
2:04 – Grinding the Meat perfectly
3:17 – The 7-Minute Rule for Boiling Eggs
3:20 – Cooking the Shallots & Mushrooms
6:24 – Charcuterie 101: Binding the Forcemeat (Crucial Step!)
8:02 – Pro-Tip: How to peel soft-boiled eggs easily
8:45 – How to build and assemble the pie
13:36 – Scoring the pastry & Baking instructions
14:29 – Slicing the pie & The “Easter Egg Hunt” Taste Test!
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#PateDePaques #FrenchEasterPie #EasterRecipe #MeatPie #FrenchCookingAcademy #FrenchFood #Charcuterie #EasterAppetizer #PuffPastryRecipe
PRINTABLE RECIPE CARD ➡️
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14 Comments
Have you ever try this easter recipe before? If you try the recipe let me know in the comments👨🍳
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It's a glorified gala pie😂❤ ha ha
Always lovely to see new recipes!
Fantastic thank you
Fantastic looking little thing 👍👍👍👍 WOW
In Germany, a similar dish is known as "Falscher Hase", which translates to "Fake Rabbit" (don't ask me why). Only difference is, in Germany it's not wrapped in pastry. Maybe that dish was introduced to Germany when Napoleon's troups occupied Germany. In that case, thanks for that, it's delicous 😉
Lovely dish. We have something similar in the UK, but cooked in hot water pastry, the Gala Pie. I remember watching a children's science program called "How ✋" in the 70s where they explained how the continuous cylinder of yolk & white was made that ran the entire length of the pie. (You only got the egg cylinder in commercial pies) Homemade versions you would chop a little off of the base & top of the eggs & lay them lengthwise .
I love watching some of the French makers of "raised pies" – pâté en croûte, masterful pastry work. Enjoy making them myself too, though my work is put to shame by them.
Oh dear, the moment I saw “Ultimate French Easter Appetizer” my brain teleported straight back to the year I tried to impress my family with a fancy charcuterie board and accidentally created what looked like a confused Picasso painting made of cheese, and goodness, I still remember standing there whispering “Luise, what have you done” while the salami kept curling like it was trying to escape, and my inner voice went “Hold on… maybe this is modern art,” but then my aunt walked in, stared at it, and said “Interesting…” which is the universal sign for “This is a disaster,” and honestly that whole fiasco taught me more about productivity and communication than any workshop ever has because assembling charcuterie is basically a metaphor for life: if you don’t plan ahead, everything slides off the board, if you don’t communicate clearly, someone will put grapes next to the pâté and cause emotional damage, and if you don’t stay calm, you’ll end up arguing with a block of brie like I did, muttering “Why won’t you cooperate,” so now whenever I see a recipe like this, I just go “Woohoo” and remind myself that perfection is overrated, progress is delicious, and even if your appetizer looks like it survived a small tornado, people will still eat it and praise your creativity, so trust me, embrace the chaos and let your Easter table shine.
Ca a l’air bon, tout ça !
For some reason that I can't explain, the word "forcemeat" makes me almost as nauseated as the word "mouthfeel". But I feel better after I looked it up. The "force" part doesn't have anything to do with forcing the meat to do something or the preparation of it; it comes from the French word for "stuff". So, it is meat that is intended for stuffing, the intended use, not the preparation. It's prepared with a lot of fat, like sausage meat, which is stuffed into casings and is a kind of forcemeat. I still wish it was called something else, though.
If I don't have a meat grinder? Can I just chop it really fine?
Looking nice, I will have a go, thank you.
Wow😮
I’d prefer a scotch egg, but I’m British.