By our sea-shore, we might imitate the Norman
method of reducing little white fish in
the stew-pot with a few herbs into a sort of
water souchi called bouillabaise, which is capital
eating, cools into a clear and very firm jelly, and,
if kept hot, with water added, remains good for
a long time. Of all this, and of much else in
French cottage cookery, delightful accounts will
be found in a couple of recent volumes entitled
Life in Normandy, showing how a genial and
accomplished Highland laird, now dead, made
himself at home by the Bay of Cancale, and
cleverly observed and recorded what he saw
with an especial eye to the better feeding of
the poor in his own land, for "it was suggested
that ingenious foreign devices and engines for
ensnaring, growing, and gathering food, and for
making it eatable, might be so described as to
benefit the poor at home, whose single dish of
potatoes might easily be varied at a small cost."
It was argued that a good cheap dinner at
home would tempt a poor man from bad dear
drink abroad, and that a poor Scotchman's wife
might be taught to do that which poor wives do
elsewhere. Enlivening the execution of his main
purpose with a pleasant setting of the incidents
of life in Normandy, the Scotch laird made a broth
of a book, wholesome victual and good entertainment,
as all wholesome victual ought to be.

A curious passage in this gentleman's
experience, backed by what he was told in
Normandy, raises the question of snail-soup. We
do eat sea-snails, periwinkles, but we leave the
land-snails and slugs to consume our fruits,
hearing only with a shiver that in other lands
they have been found eatable. Now it is said
that soup made of the common black slug is
one of the lightest and most nutritious kinds
of food that can be given to an invalid.

In a gravel-pit near Sydenham an Irishman and
his family once squatted. They built a hovel near
the side of the pit, and the man earned large
wages as a gravel-digger, till he was one day
killed by the fall of a bank he was cutting. The
widow and children continued to live in the hut,
and it was remarked that although they had no
visible means of subsistence, she and her
children were more fat and rosy than any labourer's
family in the parish. Hen-roosts having been
robbed, and sheep stolen, suspicion of course
fell on the widow, a search-warrant was
obtained, and the constables, finding a good-sized
cask, containing what they took to be the stolen
meat cut into little morsels, wheeled the cask off
on a hand-barrow, and carried the woman off with
it to the magistrate, her children following her,
weeping bitterly. "Oh, darling," she said to a
friendly youth who passed, "spake for me and
the children; it's not mutton, though it's their
meat and mine, and has kept death from our
door this bitter winter!" What it was she
would not tell before "them blackguards" the
constables. But when the magistrate had
inspected the barrel, and also declaring its
contents not to be mutton, asked her to tell what
it did contain, in order to clear herself of all
suspicion, she replied, "Send them fellows away,
and I will tell your honour." To the
magistrate's private ear she accordingly confided that
she and her children were living on salted slugs.
She had seen them given to a young man in
Ireland sick of consumption, and he throve and
got quite fat upon them. When destitute, she
thought that what had been so good for him
might feed her children. First, she tried them
fresh, and finding that the children throve, she
took to salting them. Her way was to drop them
into boiling water, and afterwards lay them with
salt in a cask. She and her children had
prepared two casks full, which had fed them all the
winter, and the cask now seized contained the
remainder of her store. The poor woman's secret
was kept from the constables, but told to a few
neighbouring gentry, who subscribed that the
widow might in future not want bread.

A Norman landlady was asked whether the
people in her part of the world ever ate snails?
"Yes," she said, "they are sometimes used
here, but only as a medicine. In La Vendée,
and some other parts of France, they are eaten
(the Lord defend me!) from taste. When my
husband was on service in the army, he was a
sous-officier, and was caterer for their mess.
Among the sous-officiers there was a sergeant
who belonged to La Vendée, with whom he had
a quarrel, and they fought with sabres. Their
dispute was about snails, for this man would
always bring a capful of these creatures, which
he cooked and ate at the table with my husband,
though it made him sick to see them. Well,
my husband desired him to give up such nasty
tastes, which interference he took much amiss,
so they fought, and gave each other some very
pretty blows with the edge, and then they were
good friends again, only the Vendéan agreed to
eat his snails at another mess. After this, you
would hardly believe that it was my husband
whom I first saw cooking snails; yet so it was.
A girl who was in our house as servant, had a
very bad illness of the chest; she was constantly
spitting blood, and all the doctors said she must
die. We were very sorry, for she was a good
girl and pleased us, when my husband remembered
that he had heard of such wonders being
done for illnesses of the chest by soup au
Limosin; so he set to work to prepare some for
the poor girl as he had seen it made by the
sergeant in La Vendée. He gave it to her, and
she had faith, for she got better. She then learnt
to cook it for herself, and took it twice a day,
and she got quite well and fat, and now she is
married and has two fine boys."

If any of our readers wish to try slug or snail
soup, here is the Vendéan recipe for making it:
In summer take of slugs—in winter, when no
slugs are to be found, take of snails—a sufficiency.
Snails with stripes on their shells have a bad
taste, and are to be rejected; use only those
having their shells all of one colour. Put them
for a minute in boiling water, and they will
come out of their shells quite easily. A little
bit of hard matter is taken from the head, and
afterwards they are stewed for a long time in
milk. This is winter soup. But in summer