How long doesPatelast in the fridge?

The USDA rates 3 kinds of this separately

The USDA files 3 separate entries under this name — USDA record 188, meat and poultry — and they do not keep for the same time: Pate holds 1 day to 2 days outside the freezer, Pate, poultry holds 7 days. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Pate, which is the kind the plain name means here, chosen kind by kind rather than by the order the source happens to list them in.

Freezing changes the unit, not just the number

Here the freezer does not so much extend the answer as replace it. 2 days in the sealed fridge becomes 2 months in the freezer: 30 times longer, and days turning into months. The freezer figure alone spans 1 month to 2 months, a factor of two.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

The USDA rates this item cold or frozen and never at room temperature: no pantry figure exists for it, as for 222 of the 466 foods in the data that get no pantry time at all. The source also indexes it as meat and poultry.

Pate

• In the freezer1 month to 2 months
• Unopened · in the fridge1 day to 2 days

Pate, meat

• In the fridge7 days

Pate, poultry

• In the fridge7 days

What the USDA adds in words

The USDA attaches 2 handling notes to this item, reproduced below word for word. None of them is a storage time: they qualify the figures above rather than replacing them. These are the source's own sentences, not ours, and they are the part of the FoodKeeper record that a table of durations cannot carry.

Pate, meat, in the refrigerator. Left over pâtés should be wrapped in plastic film.

Pate, poultry, in the refrigerator. Left over pâtés should be wrapped in plastic film.

Turning the range into a date

Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 4 rows across the 3 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.

Pate

• In the freezerUse by1 month to 2 months after the day you stored it
• Unopened · in the fridgeUse by1 day to 2 days after the day you bought it

Pate, meat

• In the fridgeUse by7 days after the day you stored it

Pate, poultry

• In the fridgeUse by7 days after the day you stored it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 1 day to 2 days in the fridge. What decides that is the food: the source files Pate under Deli & Prepared Foods, a heading it keeps for perishable food. Past it, throw it out rather than taste it: a perishable food can carry enough bacteria to make you ill while it still looks and smells fine.

The figure in the freezer here is a quality window. The same page carries windows of more than one kind, so which sentence applies depends on which row you are reading, not on the food. Held at 0 °F food stays safe for as long as it stays frozen, which is why a freezer figure counts as quality on this site whatever the food is. Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the calculator above puts Pate past its 1 day to 2 days in the fridge window, or the container sat out on the counter overnight. Throw the container out without tasting it, and count any hours it already spent out of the refrigerator as part of that window rather than on top of it.

The USDA's limit for perishable food standing at room temperature is 2 hours, or 1 hour when the kitchen is above 90 °F, and that clock runs whatever the storage figure says. Freezing stops the clock but does not turn it back: food already past its window is not rescued by putting it in the freezer. The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.

Is that a long time?

Pate is the shortest-lived thing the USDA files under Deli & Prepared Foods: 2 days, where the item above it, Vegetable soup, homemade, holds 4 days and the middle of the 25-item list sits at 4 days. Among the 340 foods the USDA also gives a refrigerator figure, it keeps longer than 39% of them.

Items that behave the same way

The 6 items nearest it sit inside a band of 4 days to 5 days — a tight cluster, and Pate at 2 days is inside it.

• Leftoverskeeps 3 days in the fridgewith meat, fish, poultry, or egg
• Fruit, cutkeeps 4 days in the fridge once opened
• Guacamolekeeps 3 days in the fridge
• Main dishes or meals, hot or refrigeratedkeeps 3 days sealed in the fridge
• Chicken saladkeeps 3 days in the fridge
• Coleslaw, homemade, preparedkeeps 3 days in the fridge

Products the USDA rates in the same places

Only 2 other products in the whole file carry the same set of rated places as this one, freezer, refrigerator and refrigerator from the day of purchase: Eggs and Canadian bacon. That is 2 products out of 466, which makes this a rare shape of record rather than a common one, and it is worth knowing that the comparison below is drawn from a very small group. Of the 2 shown, 2 keep longer than this one. The longest-keeping of them is Canadian bacon at 80 days.

• Eggs3 weeks sealed in the fridgein shell
• Canadian bacon10 days in the fridgesliced · up to 80 days sealed in the fridge

Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.

• Poultry pieces3 days in the fridge
• Leftovers3 days in the fridgewith meat, fish, poultry, or egg
• Guacamole3 days in the fridge
• Main dishes or meals3 days sealed in the fridge
• Meats3 days in the fridge
• Soup3 days in the fridge

The rest of the Deli & Prepared Foods shelf

Every one of the other 24 products on the Deli & Prepared Foods shelf keeps longer outside the freezer than this one, from Olives at 18 months down to Vegetable soup at 4 days. The closest of them by window are Poultry pieces, Leftovers and Fruit, cut, and the gap between this product and the rest of its shelf is the thing worth noticing here. The order counts the longest window outside the freezer, so Pate sits here at 2 days rather than at the 1 day sealed in the fridge its own answer prints.

• Poultry pieces4 days3 days in the fridge
• Leftovers4 days3 days in the fridge
• Fruit, cut4 days4 days in the fridge once opened
• Guacamole4 days3 days in the fridge
• Main dishes or meals4 days3 days sealed in the fridge
• Meats4 days3 days in the fridge
• Egg salad4 days3 days in the fridge
• Soup4 days3 days in the fridge

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 2 days, the Deli & Prepared Foods aisle gives 24 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Poultry pieces at 4 days against this one's 2 days; after it come Leftovers, Fruit, cut and Guacamole. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. The largest step the category offers is Olives at 18 months. Freezing this one instead would reach 2 months, which the comparison above leaves out on purpose.

• Poultry pieces4 days3 days in the fridge
• Leftovers4 days3 days in the fridge
• Fruit, cut4 days4 days in the fridge once opened
• Guacamole4 days3 days in the fridge
• Main dishes or meals4 days3 days sealed in the fridge
• Meats4 days3 days in the fridge
• Egg salad4 days3 days in the fridge
• Soup4 days3 days in the fridge

The record this page is built from

The USDA publishes 3 separate rows under this name — records 188, 563 and 564 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 3 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Pate, which is the kind the plain name means here, chosen kind by kind rather than by the order the source happens to list them in. The record carries 2 handling notes, quoted on this page word for word.

Where these numbers come from

Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.

Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.

Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.

Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.

USDA index terms: meat, poultry

KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.