Huître de Normandie

Appearance & taste

The oyster is sold whole and fresh. Its outer shell is hard and regularly shaped, without chipped or brittle areas at the edge and free of silt; inside it is free of sand and silt and has no cavities not covered with mother-of-pearl. The flesh is ivory or pearl white to beige with a pearl-grey sheen, and the mantle edge is the same colour or light brown to black. The strong adductor muscle keeps the shell firmly closed during transport and sale.

Depending on the proportion of meat, the oyster is a “huître fine” (meat index 6.5 to under 10.5) or a “huître spéciale” (10.5 and above). Long oysters (“huîtres longues”), whose length plus thickness is more than three times the width, may not bear the name.

Production

The oysters grow in mesh bags and baskets fixed to metal frames or tables in the intertidal zone, so that they do not touch the seabed. The farmers shake and turn the bags regularly so that the shell grows evenly; how often depends on the location and conditions of the oyster bed. From time to time they bring the oysters ashore, grade them by size and take them back. They can also move the animals within the area to make use of local currents and food supply; this is how above all the meatier huîtres spéciales are produced.

After at least 28 weeks of rearing and grading for sale comes the “trompage”: for at least 28 days the bags hang on tables in the upper part of the intertidal zone, where the oysters regularly fall dry. During this time shell damaged in grading can regrow, and the oysters learn to keep their shell closed and retain their water. According to the specification, in a 2019 study 97 % of the oysters treated in this way were still alive after 14 days of cold storage. They then go into holding tanks on land, fed with water directly from the sea or from boreholes, which may not be recirculated.

Packing takes place in the area: long or damaged oysters are sorted out, the rest are checked by knocking them together to see whether they are filled to the brim with water, counted by the dozen and wedged tightly, with the curved half of the shell facing down, into wooden baskets, which are closed with a lid and straps.

Origin & history

The English Channel is shallow, the coast slopes gently, and according to the specification the tidal range is among the strongest in the world; at low tide a wide intertidal zone, unprotected towards the open sea, falls dry. Strong currents mix the water, and rivers wash nutrients for the phytoplankton into the sea. Because the oysters do not reproduce naturally in the cool Channel, which has few rocks, and there are no wild shellfish beds, the farmed oysters have hardly any competition for food. The firm tidal flats can be driven on with tractors.

Originally wild oysters were fished from boats. An edict of Louis XIV from 1691 introduced the title of oyster supplier and seller; in the 19th century Normandy oysters went to Paris, to the large cities of western and northern France and as far as Strasbourg, Lyon, Geneva and Belgium. In ponds in the intertidal zone, people noticed at that time that oysters falling dry every day held their water longer. When the wild stocks were exhausted at the end of the 19th century, young oysters were at first sown on the seabed. In the 1960s farming in wooden crates on posts came up, as did today’s Crassostrea oysters; at the beginning of the 1970s plastic mesh bags made farming possible on the west coast of the Cotentin as well.