It’s all go for l’escargots

IT has been argued that the national food forms the national character,’ thunders Frederick W. Hackwood in Good Cheer, ‘in proof of which have often been put forward the contrast between the smooth, slippery volatile character of the soup-, snail- and frog-eating Frenchman and the heavy, stolid and imperturbable character of our own beef- and pudding-eating countryman.’ He may have been writing in 1911, but there seems to be precious little evidence of any good cheer.

Rampant and misguided culinary nationalism aside, the French are indelibly and eternally associated with this delectable gastropod. Paris wouldn’t quite be Paris, fed on vine leaves and at their fattest and sweetest in winter, sealed in their shell during hibernation.