Foie gras (French for "fat liver") is the deliberately enlarged, fat-engorged liver of a duck or goose, produced by gavage — force-feeding the bird a corn-rich diet so its liver swells to many times its normal size and fills with fat. Pale ivory to blush-pink, dense and extraordinarily rich, it melts on the tongue to a buttery, savoury, faintly sweet luxuriousness, served as a quickly seared escalope or as a cool, silky terrine or torchon. A celebrated pillar of French gastronomy, it is also a flashpoint of animal-welfare debate, banned or restricted in a number of jurisdictions.