It's National Lobster Day!

Did you know that lobster was once considered peasant food? “Lobster shells about a house are looked upon as signs of poverty and degradation,” wrote John J. Rowan in 1876. Lobster was an unfamiliar, vaguely disgusting bottom-feeding ocean dweller that resembled an insect, its distant relative. The name itself comes from the Old English loppe, which means spider.

Today, lobster is considered a luxurious delicacy all over the world. But how did it go from something that only peasants would eat to the expensive delicacy it is today?

In the 1800s, lobsters were incredibly plentiful and people who lived by the sea could simply walk down the beach and capture them during low tide. In fact, one Massachusetts community had to pass a law that limited how often you could serve lobster to your servants: too much was considered punitive. The law declared that they could only have it three times a week.

Then, when the railways started to spread through America, transportation managers realized something interesting: If no one knew what lobster was, trains could serve it to passengers as if it were a rare, exotic item. Inland passengers didn’t know lobster was considered trash food on the coast, and started to ask for it even after they left the train. It became a popular food. Canned lobster was popular for a whole (note the label pictured above), but lobster really became a delicacy when chefs began cooking it live.

By the 1950s lobster was firmly established as a delicacy; lobster was something movie stars ate when they went out to dinner. It was the sort of thing girls from new-rich families ordered for their weddings, something the Rockefellers served at their parties.

If a product’s price changes, so does our appreciation of it. Lobster might seem to taste better to us because it’s so expensive, rather than being expensive because it tastes so good!

So today, celebrate National Lobster Day, and think about how this insect-like crustacean came to dominate our national palate!