The small islands of Colonsay and Oronsay lie close together in the Inner Hebrides. On both of them shell middens have been found, great heaps largely consisting of shells left by the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who lived there just after the end of the last ice age. The majority of the shells were limpets. Limpets pop up all over the Western and Northern isles, not just on Mesolithic sites, but on sites of all ages, such as the middens at the Iron Age site at Munkerhoose on Papa Westray.

The general opinion seems to be that limpets are tough and rubbery and best used for fishing bait, after being soaked in water for a long time. Humans mostly ate them in the historical past as famine food, so probably the same applied in the prehistoric past.  According to the archaeologist Professor Paul Mellars, limpets don’t taste very good but have greater nutritional value than winkles and whelks and are easier to get out of their shells. They are therefore an efficient energy source.

However, there are people who take a more enthusiastic view. I have just come across a recipe in a book of traditional Scottish cooking for limpet ‘stovies'. The limpets are removed from their shells and added to potatoes for slow cooking in a very little liquid in a sealed pot. It originates from the island of Colonsay. (“The Scots Kitchen, its traditions and recipes”, F. Marian McNeill, edited and introduced by Catherine Brown 2010, pages 142-3).

There is a footnote on page 142 of this cookbook quoting André Simon, a French-born wine merchant, gourmet and writer, to the effect that limpets can be as good as or better than oysters in many dishes. If you Google limpet recipes, you get a lot of them, especially from Spain and Portugal. They call them ‘lapas’. Grilled with garlic butter seems to be the most popular, although fried or boiled or added to rice also feature. A village on the island of Madeira even has a limpet festival in mid-July: the limpets are grilled with garlic butter and lemon. Most of these recipes cook them in their shells. It is admitted that they are a little chewy. They are accompanied by beer or white wine – a long way from famine food.

Some caution is required with all shellfish as they are liable to contamination by various things, so don’t just rush out with a hammer and start knocking them off the rocks. But perhaps we could persuade our local sources of winkles and oysters to get us a few limpets for a change?