Like Asimov's "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline", "Pâté de Foie Gras" is a scientific spoof article, updating one of Aesop's Fables, The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs.
The goose is "the perfect defense against the atomic age", one researcher observes; large-scale industrial reproduction of its biological transmutation process would ease nuclear waste disposal and defend against radioactive fallout, and modifying the mechanism would produce any element as needed.
The narrator decides to contact Isaac Asimov—who is both an experienced writer and biochemist, and whose thiotimoline articles received much public attention—and have him write up the story, soliciting the readers of Astounding for ideas.
In a commentary on the story, Asimov wrote that it was his intention for there to be a single solution discoverable by the reader.
This implies that if the goose is maintained in a closed environment, it will convert all the oxygen-18 to gold, while still being able to breathe the predominant oxygen nuclide (oxygen-16).