Chef Frederic Eliot presses the top layer of dough to seal his paté en croute. Learning to make the delicacy has been on Eliot's bucket list for years, but he needed the proper oven to do it justice.

Eliot presses the dough into a mold while making paté en croute. The dough must remain very cold so it doesn't tear.

Eliot places duck breast into the pan while building paté en croute at Scales. "Every time I make one I learn something from it," Eliot said. "There are a lot of things that can go wrong with it if you don't pay attention."

Eliot applies an egg wash atop his oven-ready paté en croute. He makes the delicacy every other week at Scales, chronicling his pursuits on Facebook and Instagram.

Black trumpet mushrooms top sweetbreads in Eliot's paté en croute. The layers of pork mixture, duck and sweetbreads have to be placed evenly to avoid air pockets that ruin the dish.

"It's got pork and booze and cream and duck and sweetbreads, and it's encased in dough that's crunchy," Eliot says of paté en croute. "You can't really go wrong with that stuff." Staff photo by Jill Brady

Tubes vent the pastry lid of the paté en croute. Without venting, the dough would crack and the filling would spill out.

Eliot's finished paté en croute shows the dish's prized delineated layers and no gap between filling and dough. The dish is one of Eliot's favorite memories from his childhood in Paris.

Eliot's finished paté en croute. Eliot has been dying some of the dough with squid ink and making black leaves with cookie cutters that are placed on the sides of the paté en croute mold.

Eliot's dish now often sells out the first night that it's on the menu. "The most satisfying thing for me is not eating it," he says." ... It's the process of making it." Photo courtesy of Frederic Eliot