🤢 Frankly Gross 1914

Snails à la Bordelaise (Lazzarini)

Ten pounds of snails kept in a barrel for ten days, then scoured in salt and vinegar until they foam.

From: Bohemian San Francisco
Published: 1914
Yikes Scale: Iffy

Exactly as printed, 1914

Lazzarini also makes a specialty of snails, and they are well worth trying while you are experimenting with the unusual things to eat. The recipe for these is as follows:

SNAILS A LA BORDELAISE Put ten pounds of snails in a covered barrel and keep for ten days. Then put in a tub with a handful of salt and a quarter of a gallon of vinegar. Stir for twenty minutes until a foam rises, then take out and wash thoroughly until the water runs clear. Put in a large pot a pint of virgin olive oil, four large onions and eight cloves of garlic, all chopped fine, and a small bunch of parsley, chopped fine. Put the pot over the fire and when the onions are browned stir in some white wine or Marsala and then put in the snails. Cover and let simmer for thirty-five minutes. While cooking add a pint of meat stock, a little butter and some anise seed. When done put in a soup tureen and serve. To remove the snails use small wooden toothpicks.

Bohemian San Francisco, 1914. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

The ten days in the barrel is a purge — starving the snails so the gut clears before cooking. It is real technique and it is still done, and it is also ten days of an animal in a barrel.

The salt-and-vinegar stir is the part that reads worst now. The foam is the snails' slime coming off under the salt, and they are alive throughout.

Notes from the 21st century

Purging is not squeamishness. Wild snails browse on things you would not want to eat, and the gut is not removed before cooking. The starve is a food-safety step.
Wild snails carry rat lungworm. Angiostrongylus cantonensis is a real hazard in raw or undercooked snails in many regions. Thorough cooking is not optional.
This was a restaurant dish. Bohemian San Francisco records what was actually served in the city's restaurants before the fire, Lazzarini's snails among them.

Also in this book

Toulouse Ragout — Half a dozen large cockscombs with sweetbreads and truffles, in drawn-butter sauce.

Don't take our word for it. The complete book is online, free and searchable.

Read the original page →

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