No. 1016

Edible Snails, Provencal, and with Provencal Butter

Escargots a la Provençale et au Beurre de Provence

Prepare and cook the snails as for No. 1013, fry in oil without browning, some shallots, mushrooms, garlic, and parsley, all to be finely chopped and seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, add a little flour, stir well and moisten with white wine and fish stock (No. 195), reduce thoroughly to the consistency of a sauce. Fill the shells by putting into each one, one or two snails according to their size, finish filling with the sauce, and cover with bread-crumbs, besprinkle with butter, and heat them in a hot oven.

With Provencal Butter.—Cook and prepare the snails as for No. 1013, set at the bottom of each shell a little of the following butter: Stir into some butter finely chopped parsley, onions, and crushed garlic, and finely cut up thyme and bay leaf, season with salt, black and red pepper, pound and press through a sieve. Set the snails on this butter and finish filling the shells with the same and some fresh bread-crumbs, range them on a dish, and place them in the hot oven; serve when the butter boils in the shell. Accompany these snails with a small silver pick to remove the insides.

FROGS (Grenouilles).

A small quadruped of the Rana family, having a smooth skin, flat head, large mouth, and bulging eyes; it lives in the water. The under part of the stomach is white, dotted with brown. Frogs' meat contains a gelatinous principle, more fluid and less nourishing than any other animal; it is considered quite a delicacy, and is healthy and agreeable to the taste. Refreshing broths are made with frogs' legs, analogous to those composed of chicken or veal.

← No. 1015 Edible Snails a la Bourguignonne Edible Snails No. 1017 Frogs' Legs a la d'Antin →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two treatments of the same base: snails cooked, returned to their shells, and either bound in a reduced wine sauce or packed in a compound garlic butter. Neither version gives quantities, so work by proportion.

The missing step (No. 1013)Both versions begin "prepare and cook the snails as for No. 1013," Ranhofer's base preparation for edible snails; that step is not reproduced here, but it would cover purging the live snails, getting them out of the shells, and cooking them until tender before they are returned to the shells. If you are starting from live snails you need that step in full; without it the meat is gritty and tough. Tinned Helix snails, sold with a bag of empty shells, skip straight to the filling.
Hot ovenRanhofer gives no temperatures, so read "hot oven" as roughly 425-450F in a modern range if you want a number. The shells go in only long enough for the butter to boil up at the mouth and the crumbs to colour -- the cue the recipe itself gives; the snails are already cooked and prolonged heat shrinks them.
Proportions for the Provencal butterFor about four dozen snails, work 1/2 lb softened butter with 4-6 cloves of garlic, a small onion, a good handful of parsley, a teaspoon of thyme leaves and a crumbled bay leaf, salt, black pepper and a pinch of cayenne ("red pepper"). The instruction to pound and press through a sieve is what makes it smooth; a food processor does the same work.
The sauce versionSweat the shallots, mushrooms, garlic and parsley in oil without colour, dust with flour to make a light roux, then moisten with roughly equal parts dry white wine and fish stock and reduce hard. It should be thick enough to sit in a shell without running out, closer to a paste than a pouring sauce.
Fish stockNo. 195 is Ranhofer's fish stock, not reproduced here; any light fish fumet or shellfish stock stands in, and bottled fish stock will do. A well-reduced chicken stock is not out of character with the garlic and wine.
NutmegThe nutmeg in the first version is not decorative. A small grating rounds the mushroom and shallot base; more than that dominates the wine.
Serving and yieldSix snails is an ample first course, a dozen a generous one; a pound of butter's worth of filling covers eight to ten servings. Set the shells mouth-up in a snail plate or on a bed of coarse salt so the butter does not run out, and provide the pick the recipe calls for along with tongs or a folded napkin, since the shells come out too hot to hold.

A Little History

Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 with the whole French repertoire in it, snails included. The two versions here mark a real regional divide: the Burgundian style immediately preceding (No. 1015) leans on butter, parsley and garlic alone, while the Provencal treatments bring in oil, wine, mushrooms, thyme and bay, and in the second a hit of cayenne. The escargot of European cookery is normally Helix pomatia or the smaller Helix aspersa, gathered in vineyards and orchards and fattened before killing, which is why the traditional preparation devotes so much attention to purging before any cooking begins. The frog note that trails after the recipe is not a comment on the snails at all: it reads as the header to the Frogs section that follows.