A choice dish for the holidays, oysters will perhaps be at your table for New Year's Eve.

But where does this popular French shell come from?

Olivier Poels looks back on Europe 1 on the history of this product, consumed since Antiquity by the Romans. 

Every day during the holidays, Olivier Poels takes us to discover the history of a dish.

Today, a must for New Year's Eve tables: oysters.

Consumed since Antiquity, several varieties have reached the French coast, from the flat to the hollow, including a variety imported from Portugal.

Discover the epic story of this seafood, star of the holiday season. 

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"It is fascinating to imagine that a human discovered this shell in the water and decided to open it, then to eat it. Especially since it must have been complicated to open it. The oyster is eaten. Since Antiquity, the Romans already imported it for their consumption, a long journey which must have been the source of some food poisoning, given the transport conditions and the fragility of this product. 

Portuguese oyster decimated

Oyster farming came much later, in the 17th century.

You should know that at the time, on the French coasts, there was only one variety of oysters: the plate.

Today it is very rare.

We gradually learn to domesticate it, but in 1860, the operators decided to import a Portuguese oyster.

This variety, more robust, will be the heyday of French oyster farming, until 1970. 

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That year, the Portuguese oyster was affected by two diseases.

First that of the gills from 1966 to 1970, then haemocytic virosis from 1970 to 1973. Like Phylloxera and vines, almost all of this variety of oyster will disappear.

This will obviously give rise to a terrible economic crisis for oyster farming, because flat oysters cannot replace them.

The introduction of the cupped oyster

Subsequently, the cupped oyster was introduced to the French coasts from Japan.

Today, it represents 85% of production.

There are different numbers: from double zero, to four or five, smaller.

Because the bigger the number, the smaller the oyster.

They will be matured in a different way: there are oysters from the open sea or oysters which are matured in tanks.

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There are practically all along the French coast: in Brittany, in Normandy but also at the edge of certain ponds, such as the Thau pond, for example. "