pale-shelled

Updated: July 7, 2026

He told me, too, of a man who, from bravado, tried to swallow in his presence, and at a single gulp, one of the big pale-shelled snails known in Paris, where they are eaten, after being cooked with butter and garlic, as escargots de Bourgogne but it stuck in his throat, and a catastrophe would have happened but for the sturdy blow which his companion gave him on the 'chine. That a snail-eater should criticise gipsies for eating cockchafers shows what creatures of prejudice we all are.

Edward Harrison Barker - Two Summers in Guyenne