If you’ve ever eaten an oyster, the prospect may have seemed
odd to you at some point. After all, who collected these shellfish from the sea
for the first time and thought “I’d eat that”? In all actuality, people have
been eating mollusks, scallops and other shellfish since the dawn of time.
Scallops
Food historians can confirm that the ancient Romans were
enjoying scallops and that by the 17th century people were slicing
up scallops, breading them and serving them with a sauce. Aristotle observed
that scallops retained their best flavors when they spawn in the spring.
Oysters
The Chinese may have been the first group of people to
cultivate oysters, but the world has enjoyed them since the days before
recorded history. There was one point in the nineteenth century when one could
walk to the coasts of France and pluck oysters from the sea to eat for dinner.
Mussels
It was an Irishman with a penchant for crime that brought us
the world’s first recorded instance of eating mussels. Patrick Walton found
himself in a precarious situation and left Ireland in a hurry. He did so in a
boat that was ill equipped for the task and ended up shipwrecked off the coast
of France. There he tried to capture sea birds in a net he set up. He captured
mussels instead and managed to live off the seafood.
There is evidence, however, that he was not the first.
Ancient Europeans were raising mussels in 500 BC with bundles of branches they
used to capture them.
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