Rare Quahog Pearl Found in $14 Appetizer

Scott Overland, a husband and father-of-two who works in corporate communications in the Philadelphia area, was on vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware with his wife and two children last week. On Aug. 9, while dining at a local seafood spot called Salt Air, he found something unexpected: a purple pearl in his clam appetizer.

“I was the one mostly eating the clams and towards the end of the dish, I just chomp down on something that felt kind of hard,” Scott Overland told TODAY Food. “I thought it was a shell or something like that, but then looked and it was this little purple thing.”


At first, Overland thought it was something that a chef had accidentally dropped in his dish because it was such a unique color that neither he nor his wife even knew could exist in the pearl world. Overland also said he didn’t really know that clams could make pearls, either, thinking (like most folks) that pearls are mostly an oyster’s milieu.

By the way: All mollusks can technically make pearls, but only some saltwater clams and freshwater mussels are used to commercially grow the kind of pearls you would see at the Oscars or on Harry Styles. These creatures include oysters, mussels and, yes, clams.

After ruling out buttons, beads and "those little dot candies that come on paper," Overland and his wife saw that the clamshell had a little indentation in it from where the pearl had grown.

SOURCE: https://www.today.com/today/amp/rcna43401

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