Omniana/Volume 2/Snails
197. Snails.
That Mæcenas of Cookery, Sir Kenelm Digby, who is remembered for so many odd things, was one of the persons who introduced the great shell[1] snail into this country as a delicacy. He dispersed the breed about Gothurst, his seat, near Newport Pagnel: but the merit of first importing it is due to Charles Howard, of the Arundel family. The fashion seems to have taken, for that grateful and great master cook, Robert May, has left several receipts for dressing snails among the secrets of his fifty years experience.
Snails are still sold in Covent Garden as a remedy for consumptive people. I remember, when a child, having seen them pricked through the shell to obtain a liquor for this purpose, but the liquor was as inefficacious as the means to obtain it were cruel. They were at that time, I know, eaten by the men who worked at the glass-houses, probably from some notion of their restorative virtue.
Shell snails of every kind are rarely found in Cumberland; the large brown species I have never seen there. The snail is so slow a traveller that it will probably require many centuries before he makes the tour of the island.