No. 1013

Edible Snails, to Prepare

Escargots, Preparation

Should the snails be taken from grape vines, either in the spring time or autumn, they must be put into a cage, and starved for eight days. If they be purchased in the winter in the markets, they are then closed and ready to cook; in the latter case, wash them well in tepid water to break the openings and remove the glue, then put them into a vessel with fresh water and salt, and let them disgorge for twelve hours (the vessel to be covered with a grater to prevent the snails escaping); afterward wash them again in several waters. Put the snails into a stock pot with water and a pinch of potash; cook until the meats can be removed from the shells--half an hour will suffice for this, then drain and pick them out of the shells. Wash the meats in several waters, suppressing the green vein found in the thinnest part of the snail, then range them in a small earthen pot lined with fat pork; add an onion, a bunch of aromatic herbs, a clove of garlic, a few spoonfuls of brandy, and moisten to their heighth with broth and white wine; close the pot, fasten the cover down with paste, and let cook over a slow fire or gas stove for six hours. When the snails are well done remove, and let them cool off in their own broth. Wash well the shells and let them dry before using.

← No. 1012 Crawfish with Cream Edible Snails No. 1014 Edible Snails, Bordelaise and Saintonge →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a preparatory recipe, not a finished dish: it takes you from live or shelled snails to cooked meats and clean shells, ready to be stuffed and served under one of the numbers that follow. Nearly all of it still holds, with a few substitutions.

The green veinSuppressing the dark spiral at the narrow tail end is the step that matters. That is the hepatopancreas and lower gut; leaving it in gives a bitter, gritty, muddy mouthful no amount of butter will cover.
PotashPotassium carbonate, added to loosen slime and firm the flesh. Food-grade potassium carbonate is still sold, though many modern cooks instead rub the purged snails hard with coarse salt and a splash of vinegar, rinse until the water runs clear, and skip the alkali.
Purging and starvingEight days of fasting for vine-gathered snails is not squeamishness; snails browse plants that can be bitter or toxic and the gut needs to empty. Snails collected wild should never be eaten raw or undercooked at any stage, as several species carry rat lungworm; the long cooking here is what makes them safe.
Which snailsRanhofer appears to have in mind Helix pomatia gathered from vineyards. Collection of that species is protected or regulated in a number of European countries today. Farmed Helix aspersa (petit gris) or canned Burgundy snails with a bag of separate shells are the practical sources; canned snails are already cooked and need only the braise, cut to about an hour.
"Moisten to their heighth"Add broth and white wine until the liquid just reaches the top of the snails, not above. The recipe gives no proportions for the two.
Fasten the cover down with pasteA luting paste of flour and water rolled into a rope and pressed round the lid rim, which bakes hard and seals the pot. A tight-lidded casserole with a sheet of foil under the lid does the same work.
Slow fire, six hoursA sealed pot at a bare tremble. Six hours suits large tough wild snails; farmed petit gris are done in two to three, and go stringy if pushed much beyond that. Cool them in their broth or they tighten.
Fat pork liningSalt pork or unsmoked fatback sliced thin to line the pot. Blanch it first if very salty; the broth reduces over six hours and can turn brackish.
Yield and next stepsReckon a dozen snails per person as a first course. The cooled meats keep two days in their broth, refrigerated; the boiled and dried shells keep indefinitely and are reused year after year.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer put this in The Epicurean (1894), the vast compendium of his thirty-odd years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and its presence there says more about ambition than demand. Snails were a French provincial food that Paris restaurants had made fashionable in the nineteenth century, and an American chef claiming parity with Paris was obliged to be able to produce them. The two-stage method, a long purge and a long slow braise before the snails ever meet garlic butter, is the classic Burgundian and Bordelais practice, and the recipes numbered just after this one send the prepared meats off in exactly those directions. The detail about buying them in winter "closed and ready to cook" refers to the calcareous epiphragm a snail seals itself behind to hibernate, which is also the traditional sign that it has emptied its gut on its own account.