While the pâté de foie gras is a dish of modern times, the ancients nevertheless knew the secret of enlarging the liver of the goose; but with the relapse into barbarism the secret became lost, to remain undiscovered until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Alsace is the chosen home of the goose, and this fowl has rendered its capital more celebrated than the siege of 1870 or the marvellous façade and clock of its Münster. "My idea of heaven," said the Rev. Sydney Smith, referring to the Strassburg product, "is eating foies gras to the sound of trumpets!" For although the pâté is produced in numerous localities on the Continent, in no other place does it attain the superlative bloom and delicacy that it does in the more important manufactories of the historic city on the Ill. To think of Strassburg is to think of Doyen and his confrères and their incomparable productions, around which rise the Gothic glories of the mediæval fane, the quaintly gabled houses embellished by the craft of the wood-carver, the statues of Gutenberg and Kleber, and the town's great girdles of fortifications and inner ramparts. It is said the pâté de foie gras is the invention of a Norman cook named Close, who was in the employ of the Maréchal de Contades, military commandant of the province from 1762 to 1788. On the retirement of the maréchal, his cook remained in Strassburg, and began the manufacture of the dish which had rendered the table of his employer famous. There were truffles in the Wasgenwald, with trained dogs to hunt them; the goose everywhere stood ready for sacrifice; while the near-by vineyards of Neuwiller, Morsbrunn, and Westhausen contributed their wines in abundance as its fluid concomitant. But the pâté did not reach its highest excellence until some time afterwards, when Doyen, a pastry-cook of great genius, already celebrated for his _chaussons_ of veal and inimitable apple-puffs, substituted the blacker, larger, and more fragrant truffle of Périgord, adding a _bouquet-garni_ composed of numerous spices. Upon the proper blending of these depends to a large extent the success of the dish, just as the special flavour of a brand of champagne results from the precise adjustment of its liqueur.