Mussels have earned an eminent place in the culinary echelon. The Romans adored them and the French King Louis XVIII was a great enthusiast. Known to man for thousands of years, mussels are abundant in the Atlantic, though they are now often commercially cultivated. All along the coast, you'll find mussels attached to small stones, seaweed and rocks; the larger ones are collected during low tide at the water's edge.

It is said that in 1235, a ship loaded with sheep was wrecked in Aiguillon Bay. An Irishman named Walton, the only one of three crewmen to survive, lowered a net stretched over four pilings into the silt to collect his food. He soon noticed clusters of mussels appearing on the wooden posts, growing at a faster rate than in their natural banks. The first site for cultivating mussels was established in 1246 and the collecting stakes were called "bouchots" or "posts."

Few characteristics
members of the Mytilidae family

It is an oblong bivalve mollusk, usually smooth, measuring 6 to 10 cm long

The interior of the shell is smooth and pearly

The mussel secretes a tuft of tough filaments called byssus, or byssal threads, by which it attaches itself to rocks and wood near the shore

Its hard shell is bluish-black, brown, or brown streaked with black

The lean plump flesh is orange-coloured in adult mussels, whitish in immature ones