How to Cook Snails (Escargots)

How to Cook Snails (Escargots)

I’ve read through dozens of old cookbooks from the 1800s and snails have only been mentioned in one of them. They have never been popular in the United States; and especially not during this time period.

The information below is from:

The Hand-Book of Practical Cookery
For Ladies and Professional Cooks
by Pierre Blot New York, 1884

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SNAILS: A good many are now imported from Europe.

CLEAN AND PREPARE SNAILS
Throw them in boiling water, in which you have put some wood-ashes. Leave them in till they have thrown their cover wide open, which will take about fifteen minutes. Then take them off, pull them out of the shell by means of a fork, place them in lukewarm water, and leave two hours. Next, rub them in your hands, and then soak in cold water. Rub them again in your hands in cold water two or three times, changing the water each time, so as to take away most of their sliminess. Wash the shells in lukewarm water with a scrubbing-brush, and drain them when clean. Just salt the snails to taste, and eat them as they are, warm or cold.

SNAIL BROTH
Clean and prepare twenty-five snails as directed previously. Put them in a saucepan with a carrot, an onion, and a head of lettuce, all chopped, a small handful of chervil, a few leaves of sorrel, and a little salt. Cover the whole with three pints of cold water. Boil slowly for about three hours, strain the broth, add a little butter to it, and it is ready for use.

A tumblerful of this broth, taken warm before retiring, is certainly the best thing for a consumptive person.

It is also excellent for a cough.

BROILED SNAILS
For two dozen snails, knead together and make a paste of a sufficient quantity of butter, parsley chopped fine, salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg, about two ounces of butter, a tablespoon of parsley, a saltspoon of salt, a pinch of pepper, and the same of nutmeg.

Put a piece of the above paste, the size of a kidney bean, in each shell, then the snails, and at the top again the same quantity of paste. Lay them one by one close together in a crockery or cast-iron kettle, the mouth of the snails up, and not one upon another.

Cover the kettle well, set it on a moderate fire or in a moderately heated oven, and leave thus till cooked, which is easily seen by the parsley beginning to turn black, or as if fried. Lay them on a dish in the same order, and if there is any gravy in the kettle, put a part of it in each shell, and serve hot.

They can be broiled on a gridiron, but they are not as good as in a kettle; some of the juice is lost, and also the flavor.

In eating them, be careful after having taken off the snail and eaten it, to turn down the shell, for there is some juice in the bottom of it which is delicious. The best way is to drink it as if from the bottom of a glass.

STEWED SNAILS
Put in a stew-pan four ounces of butter for fifty snails, and set it on a good fire. When melted, sprinkle in it a teaspoon of flour, stirring a while. Then add a teaspoon of parsley chopped fine, two sprigs of thyme, a bay-leaf, a pint of white wine, and then the snails. Cover the whole with warm broth, boil gently till the sauce is reduced and the snails are cooked. Serve them mouth upward, and filled with the sauce.

photo credit

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Have You Ever Eaten Snails? Leave a Comment Below.

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9 thoughts on “How to Cook Snails (Escargots)

  1. Michael Farrer says:

    Addendum to previous comment.
    After temporarily immersing snails into salty water, give final rinse in fresh clean water. The salty water treatment is applied just before cooking as the salt will essentially kill them.

  2. Michael Farrer says:

    One of the foods of the future.
    Important!
    You need first to purge them of there stomach contents by feeding them bran and fresh veg for a few days. Next, fast them for a few days with them having access to water only.
    After purging, put them in salty water to make them ‘slime out’, repeat process until there is no more slime.
    Failure to do these basic preps may leave some toxins in the snail flesh.
    Bob Smith. I think you got it basically right!

  3. Bob Smith says:

    Forty years ago the snails were eating my red leaf lettuce in my garden. So I got an old aquarium, put a little water in it, tilted it so they wouldn’t’t drown, and filled it with snails and cornmeal. Every day I would change the water and wash out the little black snail poops and add fresh cornmeal. After about a week the poops turned white, the color of cornmeal. The last day I added a little white wine to get the snails drunk and flavorful. I then boiled them, pulled them out of their shells, cut their anus off, and made the garlic parsley butter green onion sauce and had them over linguine with French bread and butter and Chardonnay. Those snails never ate my red leaf lettuce again!

      1. I loved this story. Wish I was there to have had some escargots with crispy, warm Italian bread and a glass of white wine.

        1. I’ve never tried escargots, but I would order them if I saw them on a restaurant menu.

  4. Sorry. I am going to have to pass on snails. 🙂

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