Peter Williams, Snail, London: Reaktion Books, 2009. Beyond the shell and slime.
Snail is a wonderful encapsulation of stories of our relationship to snails.
Peter Williams charts the sense and sensibility (and pride and prejudice) of snails, snail sex and even a snail timeline!
This compact compendium covers the whole spectrum of snails and slugs from the common terrestrial garden snail to the aquatic whelk. Although the author himself is not particularly partial to gastropod gastronomy (gastrophagy?), he does pay heed to a small inventory of culinary references and recipes. Whereas French and Spanish recipes abound with variations on escargots a la bourguignonne, the English never really took to eating snails save for medical purposes. In England the snail remained on the apothecary shelf where it was considered particularly curative against lung complaints and gout. The soft flesh of Helix pomatia and Helix apersa were eaten whole or made into a ‘mucilaginous broth, or the shell of the animal was pricked to enable the patient to suck out the ‘oozing liquor”.
For more about these marvellous monopods and about this book see Snail, Animal series, Reaktion books