Word: cadart
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...Alas! says Cadart, life is not so easy. The peaceable snail has a host of enemies: the weather, rats, turtles, crows, foxes, ducks, parasitic insects that lay eggs in its flesh, and picnickers who abandon bits of canned heat, which is death to snails. When Cadart has described all the troubles of les escargots, he is close to tears...
...Dessert and Lent. The snail, surviving all attacks, has interested man since earliest times. Cadart tells of Stone Age people who lived almost exclusively on snails. The Greeks loved snails both gastronomically and scientifically. Aristotle described them in detail; Pliny told how the Romans cultivated them for food. In Roman Gaul, snails were served as dessert, and in medieval Europe they were raised by convents and monasteries as canonical food for Lent...
Having established snails in cultural perspective, Cadart goes into more detail about their anatomy and their slippery lives. As mollusks risen from the sea and hardly adapted to the land, they are dependent on humidity. They prefer to travel and graze only when light rain is falling or when the ground is wet with dew. The rest of the time they sleep safely shut in their shells, sometimes sealed into them with a membrane of dried mucus. Their senses of touch and smell are acute, but the little eyes on the ends of their tentacles are not efficient; they must...
...subject of the snail's bouchage (stopping up) is dear to the professional heart of Author Cadart. Before snails hibernate, their flesh is full of small, hard particles of lime that make them less desirable in the eyes of gourmets. The lime is a reserve for building the winter door, so when a snail is dug from his refuge, his flesh is in top condition, free of shelly sand...
...this central fact is built the snail merchandising profession. Cadart tells how snails are collected in the wild or raised in breeding establishments. In summer they are placed in "parks" (which date back to Roman times) and provided with shade and moisture. They are fed cabbage or other nourishing food and given loose soil to dig in. The idea is to bring them to bouchage in top condition. Fat and healthy, they dig their nests and seal themselves in for the winter. Then the snail breeders dig them up and ship them to buyers. When snails are broiled, the mucus...