When the Crocker House puts on a shore dinner, small succulent mussels accompany the lobster, corn on the cob, potato salad, blueberry pie and other traditional fixings served by the Hancock Point inn. The sweet, meaty mollusks are unusually clean, free of the sand, pearls and beards found on the wild ones along the beach nearby.

Produced by Tightrope Seafarms of Brooklin, the mussels are cultivated using a European technique practiced for centuries in the Rias Bajas (lower estuaries) of Spain’s northwestern province of Galicia. The method involves growing the bivalves on ropes that are suspended from rafts moored in protected bays and inlets. The mollusks feed solely on plankton and other organic matter. Unlike some forms of aquaculture, no antibiotics, chemicals or additives are fed to the shellfish.

Rope culture yields an extra clean, meaty shellfish that can be enjoyed in summer and in the depths of winter without the toil.

“It’s just great because they don’t have the beards and all that ancillary stuff,” declares innkeeper Richard Malaby,” noting that cultured mussels are just as flavorful when reheated unlike the wild ones. “It saves all the labor. It’s unbelievable.”

For people loath to mucking about in the sea, lacking the time or energy to clean wild mussels, a growing number of fishermen – from Blue Hill Bay to Puget Sound in Washington State – are culturing the bivalves sought after by chefs and becoming a year-round staple in restaurants, gourmet food stores and supermarkets across the United States.

At Legal Sea Foods Inc., a half-century-old Boston institution boasting 25 restaurants along the Eastern Seaboard, cultured mussels are a fixture on the menu. As an appetizer, they are stuffed with garlic butter, bread crumbs and cheese and baked on the half shell. As entrees, they are steamed simply with white wine and garlic; served in a Dijon cream sauce; or combined in a cioppino with shrimp, scallops or other shellfish.

Rich Vellante, Legal Sea Foods’ executive chef, has cooked with mussels for years.

“I think the flavor of cultured mussels is more appealing to a majority of Americans. They have a slightly sweet taste where the wild ones have more of an earthy flavor,” he notes. “From an aesthetic point of view, they are much cleaner. They have a nice black hue. The beards are also a lot less evident. With the wild ones, you are constantly wrestling with the beards.”

Bill Holler, Legal Sea Foods’ director of seafood operations, spends his days tracking down the freshest, finest seafood – from arctic char to Kumamoto oysters.

“It’s definitely a better product than the wild mussels,” says Holler, who picks the wild ones for his own consumption at his southern Maine home. He says that cultured mussels contain more meat and “are a lot cleaner. They are not sitting in mud or on rocks.”

Paul Brayton of Tightrope Seafarms has been raising mussels for about a decade. His baby bivalves are in demand at Bayard’s and Jean- Georges in New York and other top restaurants around the United States.

“I think shellfish aquaculture is the cleanest way of producing protein on the planet – cleaner than soybeans,” he reflects. “All you are doing is enhancing something that occurs naturally.”

At Salt Pond, a tidal estuary in Blue Hill, Brayton and his business partner, Evan Young, raise baby mussels on polypropylene ropes. When the bivalves reach about half an inch in length, they are removed and transferred to long lines suspended from wooden rafts floating off Hardwood Island in Blue Hill Bay.

When they reach the size sought by chefs – from the tip of the thumb to the first joint – the mussels are harvested and are carefully culled and graded before being shipped.

“My real victory has been to get a local clam digger to eat my mussels rather than some lawdy-da woman who likes mussels and has eaten them in Paris and Belgium,” Brayton remarks. “It’s a good basic food.”

The mussel’s acceptance is long overdue in the United States. American Indian, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish immigrants knew better, but the mollusks were considered unfit to eat in New England up until the mid-20th century. Like sea urchins or periwinkles, they were treated as trash that cluttered boat decks and clogged mooring lines, and were used mainly as bait for catching cod, hake, haddock and other bottom fish.

Sandy Oliver, a food historian who edits the newsletter Food History News from her home on Islesboro, says eating mussels was a sign of poverty or shiftlessness in 19th century New England.

“New Englanders stuck up their noses at the Italians and Portuguese,” she explains. “If you are what you eat, you don’t eat what THEY eat whoever THEY are.”

Then, in the 1960s, Julia Child lifted the maligned mussel from its lowly status in her Public Television program “The French Chef” and in her two-volume, classic cookbook, “Mastering The Art of French Cooking.” She taught Americans how to pick and clean the shellfish and cook classic French dishes such as Moules a la Mariniere.

In the 1970s, a clam shortage further boosted mussel consumption and seafood entrepreneurs began experimenting with ways to produce a cleaner, meatier mollusk. They tried various methods such as collecting mussel seed from wild beds and sowing them more evenly across the ocean floor.

Great Eastern Mussel Farms, has been one of the mussel’s biggest champions. The Tenant’s Harbor company, which started out as a two-man operation in the cellar of a saltwater farmhouse more than two decades ago, is among the country’s top mussel suppliers. Its cultured mussels sell in supermarkets, fancy food shops and restaurants nationwide.

A lupine-lined country road leads to Great Eastern nestled in an old granite quarry overlooking the sea. The company’s founders have spent a quarter century making mussels more palatable to Americans through various farming techniques, state-of-the-art processing and extensive marketing.

“We always wanted to be the Campbell’s soup of mussels,” declares Great Eastern’s sales manager Terry Callery, clad in coarse canvas shorts and Reeboks, gazing out his office window at a cove dotted with Lifesaver-colored lobster buoys.

Great Eastern practices “bottom-culture,” collecting mussel seed and broadcasting it over the sea floor allowing the shellfish more room to grow. Three years later, the mature mussels are harvested by fishing draggers.

In recent years, Great Eastern has promoted the faster rope method, which produces market-size mussels in a year, by providing Maine fishermen with the wooden rafts and expertise to get started.

Wild or cultivated, all Great Eastern’s mussels are thoroughly cleaned. First, they are flushed of sand and mud in great saltwater baths. Then, they are declumped, debearded and sorted by hand for size and quality before being packaged in clear plastic bags bearing a handsome, navy blue logo.

Marketing has been key to the mussel’s acceptance. Americans had to be convinced that the shellfish were healthy to eat and as tasty as clams. The first was more a matter of spreading the word, since mussels are in fact an extra-lean meat that’s low in sodium and rich in protein and Omega-3 fatty acids.

“Mussels contain more protein than T-bone steak, with one quarter the calories and almost no fat,” touts the Great Eastern packaging. Tackling the mussel’s poor image, Great Eastern dispatched chefs to supermarkets across the country where shoppers were shown how to whip up Moules a la Mariniere in a wok, with a little white wine, minced onion and parsley, for supper.

“Mussels are nature’s original fast food. What else can you get that’s five minutes fresh in the store?” asks Callery.

That the mussel’s facelift as a seafood product has paid off is clear across the United States, where demand for the shellfish has more than tripled over the last decade. That the blue mollusk has finally overcome its lowly stature is plain at Rockland’s annual lobster festival, where mussels replaced the more costly clams in the traditional lobster bake.

Jasper White, New England’s best known chef and cookbook author, only serves cultured mussels at his restaurant Jasper’s Summer Shack in Cambridge, Mass. He goes through about 200 pounds per week.

Still, White loves the summer ritual of feasting on a mess of wild mussels fresh from the sea. At his summer place in Little Compton, R.I., he sends his children down to the shore to pick the shellfish later steamed simply with white wine and garlic, or cooked Portuguese-style with chorizo in an oval-shaped cataplana.

“It is all very tribal, the sharing of work followed later by the sharing of food and friendship,” he muses. “It is what good food is really all about.”

Great Eastern Mussel Farms; telephone 888-229-1436; Web site: www.eatmussels.com; e-mail: gem@midcoast.com. Mussel recipes from “The Great Eastern Mussel Cookbook” by Cindy McIntyre and Terence Callery

Mussel Risotto

2 pounds mussels

1/2 cup white wine

6 tablespoons butter

1 shallot finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 teaspoon saffron threads dissolved in 2 tablespoons boiling water

1 cup risotto rice

1 cup mussel broth

11/2 cups water

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

Handful fresh parsley, finely chopped

Steam mussels in 1/2 cup wine. Allow to cool. Drain broth and reserve. Shuck all but eight of the mussels and put aside.

Melt butter in 6-quart pan. Add the shallot, onion and garlic. Saute over medium heat until soft. Add saffron and rice to butter mixture and saute for 2 minutes.

Add 1 cup mussel broth and 11/2 cups water. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Rice should absorb most of the broth so it is al dente in texture.

Stir in Parmesan cheese and mussel meats. Put risotto into serving dish and garnish with mussels in the shell and parsley.

Serves 4-6

Mussels with Escargot Butter

2 pounds mussels (steamed and left on the half shell)

2 sticks butter

3 cloves garlic

3 tablespoons chopped parsley

Splash of Pernod

Soften the butter and add the garlic, parsley, Pernod, salt and pepper. Put the mussels on a heat-proof platter or sheet pan. Dot each mussel with butter and place under a boiler or in a pre-heated or in a preheated 400-F oven. Whether you use a broiler or an oven, let the butter melt and almost brown. Garnish with a lemon slice.

Thai-Style Red Curried Mussels

1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon red curry paste

1 tablespoon fresh ginger, finely chopped

1 can unsweetened coconut milk

2 teaspoons sugar

1 tablespoon and one teaspoon fresh lime juice

2 pounds mussels

1 bunch scallions, chopped

1 cup steamed rice per person (if serving as an entree)

In a large saucepan, saute curry paste and ginger in oil for 2 minutes over high heat, being careful not to burn. Add coconut milk, sugar and lime juice. Bring to a boil. Add mussels and cover. Steam for 4 minutes or until shells open.

Place mussels in warm serving dish, pour sauce over and garnish with scallions.

Serves 2 as an entree with rice or 4 as an appetizer.

Portuguese Mussel Stew

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

1 28-ounce can plum tomatoes

3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

pinch crushed hot red pepper

12 small new potatoes, boiled until soft

1 pound linguica or chourico sausage cut in 1/4-inch slices

4 pounds mussels

Heat oil in large pot. Gently saute garlic, add tomatoes, juice and all. Stir in basil and pepper. Simmer 20 minutes. Add potatoes and sausage slices and heat through. Add mussels. Cover and steam until shells open. Serve in bowls with crusty bread.