Snails with garlic butter, an appetizer I ate in a pretty restaurant at Riviere du Loup, Quebec. An old British cliché parodies the French as a bizarre people who constantly eat frogs, snails, garlic, and truffles, a diet disgusting to the traditional English palate. These foods, however, are relatively uncommon on French menus, due to the cost in time (and money, as for truffles) involved. However, they are also eaten elsewhere in Europe, for example in Italy. What the English don’t know is that the Britons themselves once used to eat snails! I suppose that the anti-French culinary prejudice began during the propaganda war in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially during the Napoleonic period. Escargot is a dish of cooked land snails, usually served as an appetizer. A number of archaeological sites around the Mediterranean have been excavated yielding physical evidence of culinary use of several species of snails utilized as escargot. In ancient Rome, snails were fattened up in cochlear gardens before they were eaten. The Romans, in particular, are known to have considered escargot as an elite food, as noted in the writings of Pliny. Pliny described the snail garden of Fulvius Hirpinus 2,000 years ago as having separate sections for different species of snails. The so-called Wall fish (snails) were often eaten in Britain, but were never as popular as on the continent. There, people often ate snails during Lent, and in a few places, at Mardi Gras or Carnival. Because a typical snail diet includes decayed matter, carrion, and a wide variety of leaves, the contents of their stomachs can sometimes be toxic to humans. Therefore, before they are cooked, the snails are first prepared by purging them. The methods most often used can take several days. Farms producing Helix aspersa for sale exist in Europe and in the United States. Farm-raised snails are typically fed a diet of ground cereals. Perhaps the best known and most often cultivated land snail species is Helix pomatia,also known as the Roman snail, Burgundy snail or apple snail. According to some sources, the French imported brown garden snails to California in the 1850s, raising them as the delicacy escargot. Other sources claim that Italian immigrants were the first to bring the snail to the United States. These snails are now common throughout the U.S, and later introduced into other countries such as South Africa, New Zealand, Mexico, and Argentina. It is native to the shores of the Mediterranean and up the coast of Spain and France. It is found on many British Isles, where the Romans introduced it in the first century AD. Helix pomatia is also called the Roman snail, apple snail, lunar, la vignaiola, the German Weinbergschnecke, the French escargot de Bourgogne or Burgundy snail, or gros blanc. Helix aspersa is also known as the French petit gris, small grey snail, the escargot chagrine, or la zigrinata. Many prefer H. pomatia to H. aspersa for its flavor and its larger size, as the escargot par excellence. Thank you for your kind comments and bon appetit!