Is It Possible to Find Pearls in an Oyster?

By the way, about oysters, some of which are considered a delicacy, while others are able to create a jewel. We decided to ask the oyster sommelier about the probability of accidentally finding pearls in an oyster ordered at a restaurant. And this is what she replied:

“In the old Hollywood film Cover Girl with Rita Hayworth, the characters go to a cafe every Friday and order oysters in order to find a pearl. And in the end, one day they discover a real treasure in one of the shells. A wonderful fairy tale!

True, the filmmakers greatly embellished reality. Of course, you can find pearls in an edible oyster. But these pearls are very small, grains. They hardly shine, are not suitable for pearl jewelry and are worth nothing.

Yes, and such finds are extremely rare. There is a generally accepted statistic: 1 pearl for 20,000 oysters. But I’ll even argue with that. Working with restaurants where one or two thousand oysters can be opened a day, I assure you: pearls do not come across twice a month.

The fact is that those oysters that we eat in a restaurant and those that produce jewelry are of different biological species. And although the word “pearl” is often found in the names of brands of food oysters, all these “White Pearl”, “Black Pearl”, “Pink Pearl” and “Pearl of the Maghreb” have nothing to do with real pearl oysters.