From peasant fodder to posh fare: how snails and oysters became luxury foods

RNZ News

22-05-2025

By Garritt C. Van Dyk of
--
Photo:
Ruth Kuo
Analysis -
Oysters and escargot are recognised as luxury foods around the world - but they were once valued by the lower classes as cheap sources of protein.
Less adventurous eaters today see snails as a garden pest and are quick to point out that freshly shucked oysters are not only raw but also alive when they are eaten.
How did these unusual ingredients become items of conspicuous consumption?
Eating what many consider to be a slimy nuisance seems almost counter-intuitive, but consuming land snails has an ancient history, dating to the Palaeolithic period, some
30,000 years ago
in eastern Spain.
Ancient Romans also dined on snails and spread their eating habits across their empire into Europe.
Lower and middle-class Romans ate snails from their gardens, while elite consumers ate specially farmed snails,
fed spices, honey and milk.
Pliny the Elder (AD 24-79) described how
snails were raised in ponds
and given wine to fatten them up.
The first French recipe for snails appears in 1390, in Le Ménagier de Paris (
The Good Wife's Guide
), but not in other cookbooks from the period.
In 1530, a French
treatise on frogs, snails, turtles and artichokes
considered all these foods bizarre, but surprisingly popular.
Some of the appeal had to do with avoiding meat on "lean" days. Snails were classified as fish by the Catholic Church, and could even be eaten during Lent.
For the next 200 years, snails only appeared in Parisian cookbooks with an apology for including such a disgusting ingredient. This reflected the taste of upper-class urbanites, but snails were still eaten in the eastern provinces.
An
1811 cookbook from Metz
, in the Alsace region in northeastern France, describes raising snails like the Romans, and a special platter, l'escargotière, for serving them. The trend did not travel to Paris until after 1814.
French diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838) hosted a dinner for Russian Tsar Alexander I after he marched into Paris following the allied forces'
defeat of Napoleon in 1814
.
The chef catering the meal was the father of French cuisine
Marie-Antoine Carême
, a native of Burgundy, the spiritual home of the now famous escargots de Bourgogne.
Oyster dredge boats at Bluff, 1933 [N.Z. Railways magazine via NZETC]
Photo:
NZ Railways magazine / NZETC
Carême served the Tsar what would become a classic recipe, prepared with garlic, parsley and butter. Allegedly, the Tsar raved about the "new" dish, and snails became wildly popular. A recipe for
Burgundy snails
first appeared in a French culinary dictionary published in 1825.
It is ironic that it took the approval of a foreign emperor, who had just conquered Napoleon, to restore luxury status to escargot, a food that became a symbol of French cuisine.
Snails remain popular today in France, with consumption peaking during the Christmas holidays, but 24 May is
National Escargot Day
in France.
Oysters are another ancient food, as seen in fossils dating to the Triassic Era, 200 million years ago. Evidence of fossilised oysters is found on every major land mass, and there is evidence of Indigenous
oyster fisheries
in North America and Australia that dates to the Holocene period, about 12,000 years ago.
There are references in classical Greek texts to what are probably oysters, by authors like Aristotle and Homer. Oyster shells found at
Troy
confirm they were a favoured food. Traditionally served as a
first course
at banquets in Ancient Greece, they were often cooked, sometimes with exotic spices.
Pliny the Elder
refers to oysters as a Roman delicacy.
He recorded the methods of the pioneer of Roman oyster farming, Sergius Orata, who brought the best specimens from across the Empire to sell to elite customers.
Medieval coastal dwellers gathered oysters at low tide, while wealthy inland consumers would have paid a premium for shellfish, a
perishable luxury
, transported to their castles.
French nobles in 1390 preferred cooked oysters, roasted over coals or poached in broths, perhaps as a measure to prevent food poisoning. As late as the 17th century,
authors cautioned
:
But if they be eaten raw, they require good wine to aid digestion.
By the 18th century, small oysters were a popular pub snack, and larger ones were added as meat to the stew pot. That century, it is believed as many as
100,000 oysters were eaten each day in Edinburgh
and the shells from the tavern in the basement filled in gaps in the brickwork at Gladstone's Land in Edinburgh's Royal Mile.
Scottish oyster farms in the Firth of Forth, an inlet of the North Sea, produced 30 million oysters in 1790, but continual over-harvesting took its toll.
By 1883 only 6,000 oysters were landed, and the population was declared
extinct
in 1957.
As wild oyster stocks dwindled, large oyster farms developed in cities like
New York
in the 19th century. Initially successful, they were polluted, and
infected by typhoid
from sewage. An outbreak in 1924 killed 150 people, the deadliest food poisoning in United States history.
Far from the overabundance of oysters we once had, overfishing, pollution, and invasive species all threaten oyster populations worldwide today.
Due to this scarcity of wild oysters and the resources required to safely farm environmentally sustainable oysters, they are now a premium product.
Oysters with karamu mignonette and pickled karamu berries - a dish served at Monique Fiso's Wellington restaurant Hiakai.
Photo:
Hiakai
Scarcity made oysters a luxury, and a Tsar's approval elevated snails to gourmet status. Could insects become the next status food?
Ancient Romans ate
beetles and grasshoppers
, and cultures around the world consume insects, but not (yet) as luxury products.
Maybe the right influencer can make honey-roasted locust the next species to jump from paddock to plate.
Garritt C. Van Dyk is a Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato.
- This story was originally published on
The Conversation.