Snails’ eggs for Britons?

Press, 10 January 1986, Page 7

Snails’ eggs for Britons?

By

ROBIN CHARTERIS,

London correspondent Bon viveurs in Britain could soon be savouring a new delicacy — snails’ eggs. A French gourmet food supplier, Alain Chatillon, who first tried snails’ eggs in Tibet in 1979, has since exported eggs from French snails to Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and the United States with some success. Now he wonders whether the British palate is sophisticated enough to stomach the idea as well. The tiny eggs are said to have a “complex, subtle flavour, rapidly followed by a bitter aftertaste.” They are normally eaten as a starter on buttered toast, with seafood or hot oysters. Preparation, or “refinement” of the eggs, is undertaken in an area of the Pyrenees already famous for snails and frogs’ legs. The pale beige foodstuff is steeped in brine for a month or so, then flavoured with herbs, almond extract and a dash of pepper.

Both Harrods and Fortnum and Mason are expected to stock snails’ eggs when they become available soon.

Fortnum and Mason’s provisions manager, Mr Richard Cooper, said: “We do have some rather adven-

turous customers who might well like to try them. We often get asked for unusual things.”