Cockle

A cockle is a marine bivalve mollusc, with true cockles belonging to the family Cardiidae and featuring distinctive rounded shells that appear heart-shaped when viewed from the end, typically marked with radial ribs. True cockles live on sandy, sheltered beaches worldwide, and the common cockle, Cerastoderma edule, ranges across Northern European coasts from Ireland east to Norway, north to the Barents Sea and south as far as Senegal. In Southeast Asian cuisine boiled cockles appear in dishes such as laksa, char kway teow and steamboat, known locally as leas hal in Khmer, kerang in Malay and see hum in Cantonese, while in Japan the Japanese egg cockle is used for torigai sushi. In the United Kingdom cockles are sold freshly cooked as a snack seasoned with malt vinegar and pepper, and feature in the traditional Welsh breakfast alongside laverbread and bacon, a tradition also recalled in the folk song Molly Malone.