Jean-Georges Vongerichten

My grandmother taught me how to make the basic pate brise pastry crust when I was young. The one thing I learned simply by eating her endless variations on delicious tarts for dinner every night is that this dough can be used for just about anything - sweet or savory.

French Chef

Claire Saffitz

Pate a choux is a mixture of simple ingredients - flour, water, milk, eggs - but the proper technique is essential. Unlike other doughs, the pastry is pre-cooked on the stovetop before being enriched with eggs, piped, and baked.

American Editor

Jonathan Miles

For centuries, pates have been one of the greatest vehicles for wild game. But making a pate, which is nothing more than a meatloaf, has tended to be a laborious task, with ingredient lists as long as a shotgun barrel.

Kingsley Amis

I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented under the banner of pate than any other.

English Novelist

Use 'pate' for describing someone's head in a playful or quirky tone.

Physical Description

'Pate' refers to the top of the head, not the hair, focusing on the scalp and skull.

Not for Hair

Sometimes 'pate' is used figuratively to suggest someone's mind or thoughts.

Figurative Use

'Pate' refers to a creamy mixture, not the solid meat it's made from.

Culinary Term

This 'pate' has French origins; it's pronounced 'pa-tay', unlike the head-related 'pate'.

French Origin

Use 'pate' to talk about food in more sophisticated or upscale dining contexts.

Gourmet Context

'Pate' can refer to the head when discussing injuries or blows to that area.

Impacts and Injuries

Use 'pate' metaphorically to talk about someone's intellect or brainpower humorously.

Metaphorical Thinking

Using 'pate' for the head can give a sentence an old-fashioned or literary feel.

Antiquated Tone

 now I am alone my a coward who calls me villain breaks my pate across plucks off my beard and blows it in my face tweaks me about the nose gives me the

Ladies and gentlemen,...

 nomadic ways and for some of the world's more painful rites of passage in a remote region of northern benin west africa the pate prepares for his