periwinkle Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Food (3 ed.)
... Littorina littorea , an edible mollusc living in a small single shell (up to 2.5 cm/1"), widely distributed on both sides of the N. Atlantic. Periwinkles, or winkles as their vendors commonly call them, are now eaten much more in Europe than America, although the middens of American Indians testify to their use there in the past. Prehistoric mounds in Denmark, Scotland, and elsewhere show that they have been a popular European food for a very long time; and the diversity of vernacular names, such as kruuk’ls in Zeeland, points to continuing...
limpet Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Food (3 ed.)
... the familiar mollusc of sea shores around the world. Its typical conical shell has earned it the name chapeau chinois in France. Most limpets are edible, and Stone Age middens in such places as Orkney show that in the distant past they were consumed in huge quantities; but few are now marketed. Lovell ( 1884 ), with his unquenchable enthusiasm for mollusc-eating, collected some interesting traditional ways of preparing Patella vulgata , the common European species. Thus at Herm, ‘limpets were placed on the ground, in their usual position, and cooked...
Oysters Reference library
Jennifer Brizzi
Savoring Gotham: A Food Lover’s Companion to New York City
...embers until they gaped open. See pre-columbian . By 1524 , when white settlers arrived from Europe, there were still 15,000 Lenape in what would become New York City; the land was filled with hundreds of mounds of buried oyster shells—called middens—which gives us an idea how many of the bivalves the Lenape devoured. Middens continued to be discovered throughout the twentieth century—from a few yards across to several acres wide—especially when roads were being built or railroad tie laid for the Metro North Hudson line, or, most recently, in 1988 , below...
oyster Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Food (3 ed.)
...cucullata , a species with one shell dimpled round the rim and the other equipped with corresponding protuberances, thus ensuring a very tight fit when the two close. This oyster is well known in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Australasian oysters include the Sydney rock oyster, Crassostrea commercialis , which is probably the most esteemed of all seafoods for Australians. This has a counterpart in the North Island of New Zealand, C. glomerata . Prehistoric middens composed of infinite quantities of mollusc shells are witness to the importance of the...
fish Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Food (3 ed.)
...Two highly readable sources for the subject are Radcliffe’s Fishing from the Earliest Times ( 1921 ) and Ancient and Modern Fish Tattle by the Revd C. David Badham ( 1854 ) , which has more ancient than modern material in it. The earliest evidence is mute: the middens of empty sea shells which have been uncovered on many prehistoric sites and which reveal, for what it may be worth, that primitive people in Scotland feasted on limpets and periwinkles, and Australian Aborigines on certain clams. Harvesting such foods, which conveniently sit waiting to be...
Clams Reference library
Joseph M. Carlin
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (2 ed.)
...), ocean quahog ( Arctica islandica ), hard-shell clam ( Mercenaria mercenaria ), soft-shell clam ( Mya arenaria ), and Manila clam ( Tapes philippinarum ). Before Europeans arrived in America, Native Americans harvested clams. Huge piles of clamshells or kitchen middens identify old Indian campsites. Native Americans used the hard-shell clam, also known as a quahog, as a source of food and medium of exchange and for sealing friendships. The purple part of the shell, along with the white part of periwinkle shells, were fashioned into beads, strung on sinew,...
Native American Foods Reference library
Alice Ross, Alice Ross, and Alice Ross
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (2 ed.)
...were caught for their meat and their eggs and were often cooked whole in the shell. Freshwater and saltwater eels were also caught by spearing, sometimes in basket traps. In the winter, hunters sometimes used their bare feet to locate eels hiding dormant in the mud and then caught them with their bare hands. Shellfish was easy to obtain. Quahog and soft clams, razor clams, whelks, and oysters abounded and were simply available for the taking. The presence of large middens (shell deposits) along the East Coast and eastern rivers attests to the mammoth...
