
Lobster today is viewed as a delicacy, but was once reviled - sethbannon
http://sub.garrytan.com/lobster-today-is-viewed-as-a-delicacy-but-it-was-once-so-reviled-that-indentured-servants-refused-to-eat-it
======
jackowayed
If you read "Consider the Lobster" (which you should), you'll note that the
product _did_ change. Lobster used to be cooked dead, then canned in
saltwater. Now it's cooked live and served immediately with a hefty side of
melted butter.

Sure, maybe the class-based issues made it less likely that people would be
willing to try even lobster done right, but I don't think lobster as it was
once served would have much more success today.

~~~
joonix
I still wouldn't want to eat it three times a week. It is quite strange that
it's considered a delicacy, if you look at live lobsters up close they are
kind of disgusting and really just look like giant insects that happen to live
in the water. They do look much more presentable after being boiled/steamed
(color change) and presented on a plate with garnish, though.

~~~
integraton
> really just look like giant insects that happen to live in the water

That's because they basically are, since crustaceans are likely more closely
related to proper insects than millipedes, centipedes, and arachnids are.

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btilly
Definitely this version is oversimplified.

As Thomas Bushnell once pointed out to me, lobster has the interesting
characteristic of being delicious, but making you very sick if you eat it all
of the time. The diaries from which we get the descriptions of how horrible
people around Massachusetts Bay thought lobster was, _ALSO_ contain
descriptions of how wonderful it was. It was only after having little choice
but to eat it frequently that their extreme aversion developed.

Try it. Try to eat lobster every day for a month. See what you think about it
then.

~~~
bcbrown
I've done a much more moderate version of this with oysters. Last winter I
decided to try to eat oysters at least twice a month, because I really liked
them. At one point, they became a lot less appealing, and so I stopped. I can
only imagine how bad it would be with trying to eat them daily.

~~~
saraid216
It's probably not a coincidence that Leviticus prohibits shellfish.

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chrismaeda
Lobster is not a delicacy in New England, and eating at a lobster pound is the
New England equivalent of a German biergarten. One of the reasons why the
price has dropped so much is that the lobster fishery is managed for
sustainability.

I think the stuff about humanely killing the lobsters is hogwash. Boiling and
eating a live lobster is one of the few meals where you have to confront the
fact that we kill so that we can eat. Hold them upside down, plunge the
lobster headfirst into the boiling water, and give thanks for life. And make
sure you have a pot with a heavy lid.

~~~
geon
> I think the stuff about humanely killing the lobsters is hogwash.

Is there any _disadvantage_ to stabbing the lobster in the head first? I mean,
it just takes a second or two per lobster.

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columbo
Same could be said about flank steak which used to be a cheap cut of steak.
After Fajitas got popular the price tripled

[1989] [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/26/garden/how-a-humble-cut-
go...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/26/garden/how-a-humble-cut-got-a-fancy-
price.html)

Now about PBR... being from the Midwest and a bit of a beer snob PBR was
largely the defacto-standard because it was the cheapest lawnmower beer that
wasn't a BMC (Bud-Miller-Coors).

The same could be said about lobster - there's a story behind it.

Sure, 'they're all made up'... so is the value of gold, but they also have
some interesting history behind them if you are willing to go beyond the
surface.

~~~
pekk
Sometime do an actual blind taste test with some beers at the PBR level. The
differences are subtle to nonexistent.

~~~
columbo
Hrm? I have... there really is no difference. With PBR and other American
Adjunct Beers (
[http://beeradvocate.com/lists/style/38](http://beeradvocate.com/lists/style/38)
) It has little to to about taste and everything to do with not wanting to buy
from the 3 industrial leaders that own 90% of the market.

~~~
lifeformed
If you're on the east coast, you guys should try Yuengling. It's easily one of
the best cheap* beers out there.

* < $1/bottle

~~~
jlgreco
I'll second that. Also their "black and tan" is fantastic if you want to go
_slightly_ more expensive.

------
nostrademons
I think a lot of this is also economic. Many other types of food (beef,
chicken, pork, fish) soon became heavily industrialized, with semi-mechanized
processes capable of harvesting food in bulk. Things like trawler nets or
meatpacking assembly lines. Lobster remains fairly labor-intensive to harvest,
with lobstermen needing to check individual pots and bring up lobsters one-by-
one. That means the price of other meats has come down much more quickly than
the price of lobster.

BTW, during the financial crisis, a collapse in demand and a bumper crop of
lobsters drove the price _way_ down. In late 2008 you could pick up $2
lobsters in supermarkets in Massachusetts. My family ate a lot of lobster for
those few months...

~~~
gohrt
You can always detect when a certain kind of meat's price plummets, because
then it suddenly appears for a limited time at McDonalds:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=mclobster](https://www.google.com/search?q=mclobster)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=mcrib](https://www.google.com/search?q=mcrib)

------
frozenport
There is another piece here which deals with Lobsters being a particular toxic
dish as they are the dumpsters of the ocean: scavenging dead material. One
might not hurt, but weeks on the stuff would leave you quite sick.

~~~
rdtsc
That is what I have heard (sorry can't remember the source). But they
basically sift through the garbage and refuse all their lives. That is why
allergy to shellfish can be common and those allergies tend to be severe.

~~~
sk5t
This isn't a strong argument on its own... liver and kidneys "sift through
garbage" constantly but how many people are allergic to chicken or cow liver
or kidney?

------
anateus
I haven't tried it yet, but this method of killing and cooking a lobster is
intriguing: [http://blog.ideasinfood.com/ideas_in_food/2010/06/the-
comple...](http://blog.ideasinfood.com/ideas_in_food/2010/06/the-complete-
lobster.html)

The lobster is killed quickly with a knife in their main nerve cluster (the
article calls it the brain, but I think that's giving it too much credit).
Time is then provided for the muscles to stop seizing, and it is brined to
improve texture and to prevent coagulation of the hemolymph to the meat. Then
the lobster is divided and different parts are cooked for different times just
like we commonly do for most other kinds of meat.

I thought HN might be interested, since many of us are incorrigible
optimizers.

~~~
dublinben
That sounds like far too much work than the current process. I doubt any
lobster eaters would jump through all those hoops when simply boiling them
works so well.

~~~
saraid216
Well, it's an animal rights kind of deal. If you're the kind of person who
cares about that, this might make or break a decision to prepare lobster for
dinner. If (like me) you don't actually care, then it's not relevant.

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nhebb
In the case of lobster, I wonder if the issue was taste or freshness. If they
"washed up on the beach in two-foot-high piles", it's easy to imagine that
people were eating not-so-fresh seafood and getting sick, giving it a bad
reputation.

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vultatio
Eat any food every day and it will get old. I live in Texas and we eat
Mexican/Tex-Mex so often it gets old also, and its fucking delicious.

This article is interesting as far as showing the history of why it was
reviled in early times, but I think the same could be said of anything else...

------
hudibras
Why do people eat popcorn? They like crunchy butter.

Why do people eat lobster? They like chewy butter.

~~~
city41
I had no idea people felt this way about lobster. To me it's the greatest food
on the planet, hold the butter please.

------
geon
The same thing happened to salmon in Sweden in the early 1800:s. There are
stories about servants having contracts about not eating it too ofter as well,
but the level of truth in these is questionable.

Either way, salmon was very abundant and became expensive/exclusive. It is
getting cheaper again lately, though.

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.faktoider.nu%2Flax.html&act=url)

------
coolj
Diamonds as well. [http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-de-
beers-2011-12?o...](http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-de-
beers-2011-12?op=1)

------
jconley
I love the PBR China story. $44/bottle. Hustle! "There’s almost no ale in
China: I had to smuggle the yeast into the country."

[http://www.danwei.org/advertising_and_marketing/pabst_goes_u...](http://www.danwei.org/advertising_and_marketing/pabst_goes_upmarket.php)

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willimholte
I'm not sure this is fair—doesn't the author admit that the value of the good
is based on scarcity? That it became valuable when it could be shipped to
places that didn't have two foot tall piles of lobster washing up on the
beach?

~~~
md224
What the author is pointing out is how the social perspective is completely
arbitrary, even when it tracks the economic value. Of course lobster will be
cheaper / less valuable where it is more plentiful, but it was also viewed as
_intrinsically worse_ than other foods, in stark contrast to its popularity
today.

~~~
deelowe
What the author fails to point out is that eating seafood every day sucks.
It's too rich/sweet/salty. It's like eating cake for every meal. It's not that
people are fickle or stupid or whatever he's trying to point out here. No one
wants to eat lobster every day. Not even people in the midwest. Ohh, and to
add to that, eating a lot of shellfish can cause you to become allergic to it.

Source: I come from a coastal town and love crab, but couldn't eat it more
than one or two times a week.

~~~
sjtrny
Fish is too rich? I thought that the consensus was that it is appealing
because it is a lighter and healthier alternative to meats such as beef,
chicken and pork.

~~~
dublinben
Many fish are. Shellfish even more so. Nobody who can help it relies entirely
on seafood. Where I'm from, it was the poor children of fishermen who were
stuck eating seafood every single day.

------
protomyth
Tastes change[1], and sometimes the economics of things change (see Aluminum).
Few things have an intrinsic value that you can separate from culture.

1) although, being from ND, I have yet to meet a beer drinker willing to drink
PBR

~~~
geon
> (see Aluminum)

For aluminum, it seems to me there was also the novelty. The metal was a new
discovery and had that odd low density.

~~~
protomyth
It was also incredibly hard to extract, so it was more valuable until
technology caught up.

------
mathattack
There's stories of vodka sales increasing with price increases. Marketing can
sometimes overcome Economics. :-)

~~~
chad_oliver
No, that's still economics:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good)

~~~
gohrt
alternatively,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good)

depends on your opinion of vodka...

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danielcampos93
The british used to feed it to their prisoners because it was considered worse
than eating rats.

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lightblade
Not just lobsters, oysters happened the same

