In France, although the snail is an item on all good menus, Jean Cadart,snail lover and onetime snail merchant, discovered a serious lack:there was no up-to-date book on edible snails. The gap has now beenfilled by a book by Cadart himself. Les Escargots (Paul Lechevalier;750 francs) covers the subject with airtight completeness.
Though Author Cadart is concerned professionally with snails as food, heseems to regard them, even uncooked, with affection. His first chapterdescribes their slow, idyllic lives: how they emerge from the soil inspring after a few days of sunshine; how they cruise through the dewydawn, laying down roads of silvery slime, in search of tender herbage;how they explore the nearby world with their sensitive tentacles; howthey glide over obstacles; how they retire into their shells when windor heavy rain strikes their tender skins. “The snail is a peaceablecreature,” says Cadart. “Excesses of nature do not please him.”Patiently in his shell he waits until trouble is over. “What animalseems more free and happy than the escargot?”
But Alas! says Cadart, life is not so easy. The peaceable snail has ahost of enemies: the weather, rats, turtles, crows, foxes, ducks,parasitic insects that lay eggs in its flesh, and picnickers whoabandon bits of canned heat, which is death to snails. When Cadart hasdescribed all the troubles of les escargots, he is close to tears.
For Dessert and Lent. The snail, surviving all attacks, has interestedman since earliest times. Cadart tells of Stone Age people who livedalmost exclusively on snails. The Greeks loved snails bothgastronomically and scientifically. Aristotle described them in detail;Pliny told how the Romans cultivated them for food. In Roman Gaul,snails were served as dessert, and in medieval Europe they were raisedby convents and monasteries as canonical food for Lent.
Having established snails in cultural perspective, Cadart goes into moredetail about their anatomy and their slippery lives. As mollusks risenfrom the sea and hardly adapted to the land, they are dependent onhumidity. They prefer to travel and graze only when light rain isfalling or when the ground is wet with dew. The rest of the time theysleep safely shut in their shells, sometimes sealed into them with amembrane of dried mucus. Their senses of touch and smell are acute, butthe little eyes on the ends of their tentacles are not efficient; theymust be moved very close to an object before the snail really sees it.
The locomotion of the snail is explained in detail. The long flat “foot”lays down a roadway of sticky mucus; then parts of the foot grip theground while other parts move forward. When the snail is crawling onglass, the action of its foot can be seen as a series of slow waves.The speed averages 2½ in. per minute, and the snail makes about 35foot-waves to cover this distance. The tractive force is considerable.A snail can lift five times its weight up a vertical surface, and onthe horizontal it can pull a toy wagon loaded with 200 times itsweight. If 25 snails could be induced to crawl in the same direction atthe same time, they could pull the weight of a good-sized man.
When snails mate, they turn blue in the face, and the operation takes solong that if it starts when rain is falling it may not be completeduntil hot sunshine endangers the lives of both snails. But the effortis notably productive. Since snails are hermaphrodites, each of theparticipants becomes both a father and a mother. They lay their eggs(more than one-third of their total weight) in small hollows dug inloose soil. This slow-motion action may take about two days.
A Door of Lime. Snails may live five years, but they reach maturity in ayear. When autumn comes, it brings the crisis of their lives: they mustprepare for the winter by burying themselves in the soil and secretinga door of lime to cover the opening of their shell. Only strong andhealthy snails completely accomplish this process. Those that omit anydetail die during the winter.
The subject of the snail’s bouchage (stopping up) is dear to theprofessional heart of Author Cadart. Before snails hibernate, theirflesh is full of small, hard particles of lime that make them lessdesirable in the eyes of gourmets. The lime is a reserve for buildingthe winter door, so when a snail is dug from his refuge, his flesh isin top condition, free of shelly sand.
On this central fact is built the snail merchandising profession. Cadarttells how snails are collected in the wild or raised in breedingestablishments. In summer they are placed in “parks” (which date backto Roman times) and provided with shade and moisture. They are fedcabbage or other nourishing food and given loose soil to dig in. Theidea is to bring them to bouchage in top condition. Fat and healthy,they dig their nests and seal themselves in for the winter. Then thesnail breeders dig them up and ship them to buyers. When snails arebroiled, the mucus in which they are sealed reaches the boiling point.Then the snails “sing,” says Cadart. Enough snails sang their deathsongs in France during 1952 to reach in a slowly crawling line all theway around the earth.
