Bivalves

The edible bivalves are numerous and classified in many orders and families. Some of them are excellent, for example the oyster. Others have a less wide appeal. Many are eaten raw. Those listed below are the ones most likely to be found on sale in the Mediterranean area.

The English are traditionally bivalve-eaters, and we Londoners more so than most. The latter title I claim by adoption, having set up home in the 1950s at the World’s End, where there was an excellent and busy stall of the kind which sells winkles and jellied eel, and having had Whitehall, within scenting distance of Tower Bridge and Billingsgate, as the node of my official life. But I must deplore the gentle decline of mussel-eating which I lately perceive at home, even at the World’s End. Living in Brussels for a time brought home to me how low our enthusiasm for this delicacy is waning beside the Belgian passion which seems in contrast to wax from year to year. Interest is also waxing in North America, after centuries of indifference. The first steps towards myticulture (as the culture of mussels is termed) have been taken in New England.