Hot Pigeon Pâté à l'Ancienne

Ingredients

• Pigeons
• Fine pastry (pâte fine)
• Butter
• Farce gratin
• Sauce Madère
• Mushrooms
• Truffles
• Thyme and bay
• Sauce Demi-glace

Instructions

1. Roast the 4 pigeons, keeping them a little rare; divide each into four pieces and remove the skin from the pieces.
2. Line a buttered timbale or ordinary charlotte mould with fine pastry.
3. Mix the ordinary farce gratin with a little very reduced sauce Madère.
4. Fill the mould with layers of this forcemeat alternating with the pigeon pieces, the cooked mushrooms and the sliced truffles, finishing with a layer of forcemeat.
5. Scatter a pinch of powdered thyme and bay over it, cover with a thin sheet of pastry and seal well at the edges.
6. Bake about 50 minutes in an oven of moderate heat.
7. At the moment of serving, turn the pâté out onto a dish, detach the bottom, cut it into triangles and range these around the pâté.
8. Lightly coat the exposed forcemeat with light sauce Demi-glace and serve a sauceboat of the same sauce separately.