June 3, 2010
Coming to Grips With Lobster
I ate my first lobster last night, and I have a lot of questions, people.
Grilled Maine lobster, courtesy Flickr user Dana Moos
For one: Who decided these things were not only edible, but a delicacy? I mean, the bits of meat I clumsily extracted tasted pretty good. But take a good look at a lobster: If you’d never seen one before, how would you guess such a bug-like, intimidatingly clawed creature could be food? Wouldn’t you have to be really poor and hungry to bother trying to catch, cook and crack it?
Well, yes, actually. According to the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, lobster was considered a “pauper’s food” in early 17th-century New England, so undesirable that legend has it even indentured servants turned it down (some food historians doubt that). Though Europeans historically enjoyed eating these and other shellfish, there was more demand for lobster fertilizer than lobster thermidor among the early American colonists. But the taste grew on folks, apparently, because by the 1800s lobster meat was considered a delicacy, spawning a commercial lobster industry along New England’s coastline. Now it’s often the most expensive item on a restaurant’s menu, the thing you jokingly threaten to order when someone else is paying. (“Oh, the meal’s on you? Well, I’ll have the lobster!“)
My own lobster encounter took place rather accidentally, at a clambake. (Not a real one on a beach, but a nice affair involving a grill on a fine old D.C. restaurant’s patio.) I was fully prepared to eat clams, and did, but I hadn’t anticipated a grilled lobster landing on my plate for the next course of the set menu. If I had, I would have done some Googling first to find out the protocol. As it was, I was forced to admit that I—who had just been explaining how much I missed New England, where I lived for more than two decades—had never eaten a whole lobster. (Or any crustacean, for that matter, until my little crab tutorial in Baltimore last year.)
Which leads to my other questions: What, pray tell, is the black goo that poured out of the tail section when I pried it open? It looked like an oil spill on my plate, freckled with tiny spheres. Eggs, I presume? I always thought those were red or orange colored. The other people at my table were baffled, too, although the waiter didn’t seem alarmed. I opted not to eat the black stuff, but was I missing out? Was the roe somehow blackened from being grilled? Or did it mean the lobster was undercooked, as someone suggested to me later?
Also, assuming that those were eggs, was it bad to be eating a female? Shouldn’t she still be in the ocean, making more lobsters? I’ve read that in Maine, where my dinner originated, it’s illegal to harvest an “egged female,” but I’m not clear on what that means, exactly.
Lobster lovers, open your traps and enlighten me, please…
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
The black goo you encountered is a rare but specific occurrence. Female lobsters grow their eggs for 9-10 months in internal ovaries, then extrude them out, fertilize them, and attach them to the undersides of their tails for another 9-10 months. It’s these latter, external “eggers,” by the way, that the fishermen throw back. During the internal “pregnancy,” if the female lobster is caught or otherwise experiences conditions not conducive to further spawning, she may self-abort her batch of eggs and reabsorb them into her bloodstream. During that process her blood turns a dark color and remnants of the eggs can be visible in the blood. One of the many extremely weird and interesting facts I learned in the course of researching my book “The Secret Life of Lobsters.”
I, too, am not really a fan and have eaten lobster only once. I wasn’t impressed. Shrimp are cheaper, easier to eat and far tastier.
My Boston-born grandfather often spoke of the lobster his family ate “nearly every day” growing up, as it was considered a poor-man’s food even at the turn of the 20th century.
Interesting to read what the oil-spill on your plate was. I’ve eaten many many lobsters and never had that experience. I’m afraid it might have turned me off lobsters if I had!
When you’ve got Trevor Corson, arguably the world’s leading lobster expert, weighing in, there’s not much I can add. I’ve always loved lobster (and once made a spectacle of myself at Sparks, the NY steak house, by digging into every last little crevice of a three-pounder), but lobster has taken on a whole new appeal since I started lobstering. There’s nothing like pulling a trap over the gunwale of a boat, peering over to see what you’ve caught. Those lobsters are particularly satisfying.
Thanks so much for explaining, Trevor! Your book is on my must-read list now…
In a lifetime of eating lobsters, I encountered my first black roe-filled female last night at a local restaurant, and it was revolting. My first indication that something was amiss was the brown murky pool of liquid on my plate, followed by the less than hot lobster itself. There was also a funky smell, not the usual lovely sea smell that lobsters carry. When I flipped her over to tackle the tale, an “oil spill” of black liquid and eggs came pouring out, and I was done for: I sent it back, was reassured that there was nothing wrong with it, it merely was a female lobster. But I think, as Mrs. Wheelbarrow suggests, I might be turned off to lobsters for a good long while. Truly a disgusting attack on the senses. I dined on vegetables the rest of the meal.
I so appreciate the expert explanation given here… everywhere else talks about it being waste material or eggs that will turn red when properly cooked. I’ve eaten Maine lobster all my life and never encountered the “black goop” until the other night when I opened up a few 2-pounders. I truly thought it was some toxic material and the appetite I’d worked on all day was ruined. If it ever happens again, your information will certainly help put things into perspective.