Species sheet · The Edible Ocean
Common periwinkle
The only shellfish we eat with a pin.
- Rinse in salted water and discard empty shells
- Start in heavily salted cold water with thyme and bay, 5 minutes from the boil
- Let it cool in the broth, then serve with salted butter
- In French
- Bigorneau
- Scientific name
- Littorina littorea
- In the water
- Rocks and shore of the North Atlantic and the Channel, from the tide line to 5 metres.
- Season & buying
- All year, gathered at low tide.
- Common length
- ~2.2 cm
- How to identify it
- Small squat top-shaped shell with a blunt apex
Fine dark spiral lines all over the shell
A horny operculum closing the aperture
On the plate
Briny and direct, very marine, a mouthful with no pretensions.
Avoid: Overcooked it retreats deep into the shell and cannot be pulled out.
It grazes the film of algae off rocks with a tongue carrying more than a thousand teeth, which it wears down and replaces continuously like a conveyor belt.
In Umay recipes
One Umay recipe calls for it.
