A FRENCH DELICACY

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 19, 23 January 1926, Page 16

A FRENCH DELICACY

SNAILS FOB CULINARY USB.

Helix Pomatia, or the big whito Burgundy snail, which is considered such a delicacy by nearly all Frenchmen and not a few Britons, when it is properly cooked with butter, garlieand parsley and daintily served in a silver dish with sconces in which each reclines, is a very lordly niollus.', writes H. G. Cardozo in the "Daily Mail." It must not be thought that the finest of these edible snails are just picked up anywhere and sent to the market as they are. Snail farms exist in many parts of France, and especially in the Vosges and in the Burgundy Hills, where the selection and fattening of white snails has been brought to an art.

The snail in its wild condition, living in grass, on shadowy banks, and in the vineyards, is hunted for by school children and young girls, many of whom make quite a handsome profit on a wet and rainy afternoon when the molluscs are easiest found.

They are then taken to the snail farms, where they are graded according to age and size and placed in special parks. Here they are given green food of special delicacy, which includes a number of fragrant plants, and allowed to grow fat. The last stage of fattening, which lasts for ten days, takes place when the biggest of the snails are selected and fed with oatmeal. This not only fattens the snail but softens its body while retaining all the natural flavour acquired from the carefully chosen greenstuff on which it has previously fed. Helix Pomatia greedily eats the oatmeal, not dreaming that this is the last feast it will ever have. When it hai gorged itself for ten days it is taken out and placed in great porcelain vats with wired covers, where it is left to'fast am] clean itself before if; is washed iii brine and. water and cooked.