Considered a tasty tidbit since Neolithic Times, snails have slithered

significantly across the chronicles of culinary history.

The first written recipe for snails in France appeared around 1390 in Le Menagier de Paris, a guidebook on etiquette and household management for young brides. Then, during the 16th century, the slow-moving mollusk began appearing on French aristocratic tables with some frequency and their appeal seemed to grow once the Catholic Church classified them (along with frogs and turtles) as “fish”, allowing them to be consumed on meatless days.

Then came the great Snail Dearth of the 17th and 18th centuries when snail popularity shriveled. It wasn’t until the Alsatians re-introduced escargot to Old World tables with a wave of brasseries in the early 19th century that snails regained their status on the table.

The snails gorging on your garden today are likely of early 19th century European heritage. Their forebears were imported here by the French gastronomes full of confidence that they would become a hot item on American menus. Alas, their dreams were never realized and neglected hordes of helix aspersa began to wreak havoc on gardens, croplands and orchards all over America.

There was a brief "Snail Boom" in California in the late 1990’s, when European chefs began catering to a newly-monied Silicon Valley clientele seeking Old-world style menus. As a result, a local cottage industry of snail-ranching arose that saw sluggish snail revenues slither all the way up to the $300 million a mark.

But when the Dot-com boom went bust, the budding snail demand dried up as well. Today, California snails are once again living to a ripe old age in the pleasant shade of culinary disregard. Still, times may change again and local chefs may once again scour their gardens in search of dinner.

Salient snail facts: Snails are eighty percent water. A roasted snail is a condensed and highly nutritious food source. One hundred grams of snailflesh supplies the body with sixteen grams of protein, as well as significant amounts of calcium, magnesium, and iron. Snails must always be prepared for consumption by being quarantied in an untreated wooden box to fast for three to four days as a detoxifying process.