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Live Lobsters: A Short History
Close your eyes, and picture that large, mouth-watering lobster waiting on your plate for you to crack open and enjoy. You'd be hard-pressed to think of anything that sounds better. However, don't rush out for a live lobster dinner just yet. Wouldn't it be fun to learn a little bit about the critter you're craving before you indulge?
Once upon a time, America was peopled by only Native Americans, and lobsters were plentiful. They were so plentiful, in fact, that the Native Americans used them as fertilizer for farm fields and fish bait. They never ate them! Yuck!
The early colonists didn't like them much, either. They also considered lobsters to be fertilizer and used them only as food for the poor. They fed them to their children, slaves, and indentured servants. Indentured servants eventually started fighting back and refused to sign contracts until they were guaranteed to only have to eat lobster three times a week. Unfortunately, the children and slaves didn't have contracts.
Since lobsters could be harvested so easily by hand from the tide pools, there was no need for people to devise more technological methods of trapping them. It wasn't until the 1850s that lobster traps first appeared. The lobsters these early harvesters caught weren't marketed live, either. They were sent to canneries. The early canning methods pretty well eliminated the flavor of the meat leaving the resulting product pretty bland and tasteless. Naturally it failed to catch on with consumers.
It wasn't until our modern transportation system developed that live lobsters became sought-after luxury items. Shipped to the big cities, they quickly became expensive luxury food for the higher classes of our population.
Did you ever choose a live lobster from a tank, watch while restaurant personnel remove him, and then have him appear cooked on your dinner plate? It gives you a weird feeling, doesn't it? Your feelings are only normal. You just have to resign yourself to the fact that the little qualms you feel are all a part of the lobster-eating experience.
My great-grandmother lived most of the way through the 1960s. People around her were eating lobsters and other seafood, but she refused to even consider the possibility. It's not that she was a picky eater, because she had been raised to eat everything that was put on her plate. It's just that her sensibilities had been honed during America's Victorian era when ladies would never even think about something as ghastly as tossing a live lobster into boiling water. Pass me the smelling salts, please!
At least we've finally learned to appreciate the quality of a live lobster dinner. The prices have even come down enough that middle-class citizens can afford to eat them, too. We can buy them in supermarkets or from online merchants and cook them in our own homes. We've come a long way, baby!
About the Author Thanks for dropping by and learning about seafood. Trustworthy knowledge and reliable information on this subject is often scarce, so hopefully you got some value out of this content. Of course if you would like to get even more info about live spiny lobster then come on over to our website.
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