Every inch an American is the _Homarus Americanus_. There are not so
many inches of him as there used to be, but that makes him none the
less precious. The Pilgrim lobsters "five or six feet long," ascribed
to New York Bay in the days of Olaus Magnus, are now classed as a myth,
but four-foot lobsters (measured from the tip of the claws to the end
of the tail) have been caught. Such a giant weighs about thirty-four
pounds.
The American lobster was originally found only on the eastern coast
of North America. These lobster grounds some seven thousand miles,
including the curves of the shore, were the finest the world has ever
seen. In Canada alone a hundred million lobsters have been captured in
a year.
In one respect the lobster differs strangely from other creatures of
sea and land. Like the eel, he is a scavenger of the deep, but while
the eel is often offensive to the taste because of this feeding habit,
the lobster is always sweet. "Nothing could be more offensive to the
human nostril," writes Dr. Francis Hobart Herrick,[23] "than the netted
balls of slack-salted, semi-decomposing herring, which are commonly
used as bait on the coast and islands of Maine, but by the wonderful
chemical processes which are continually going on in the laboratory of
its body, the lobster is able to transmute such products of organic
decay into the most delicate and palatable flesh."
Were it not for this alchemistic marvel the most plutocratic
restaurants in the United States, especially those which cater to
the persons who sup after the theater, would never have become
known as Lobster Palaces. The lobster served in these places, plain
boiled, broiled, _à la Newburg_, and in other ways, is one of those
characteristic American foods which foreign epicures not only envy but
enjoy, though they cannot have our crustaceans as fresh as we do.
It has been well said that "the story of the lobster in its progress
from the fisherman's pots on the Maine coast to the grills and silver
chafing-dishes on Broadway is the whole story in miniature of the high
cost of living under an artificial economic condition." The lobsterman
gets a little over ten cents a pound. "The wholesaler doubles the
price, the retailer trebles it, and in the end the restaurant-keeper
marks it up 1,000 per cent. above the first cost, charging patrons
$1.50 a portion for what the lobsterman was paid a tenth of that sum."
To this extortion I, for one, refuse to submit. In the market you can
buy a lobster for one quarter to one-third the price charged in most
restaurants. You can make sure he is alive--never buy a dead lobster,
though they say he is safe to eat if his tail is curled and springs
back when pulled. To kill him by plunging him in boiling water may seem
cruel, but is no more so than other ways, and is certainly infinitely
less so than the usual way--which should be forbidden--of letting him
perish slowly in a barrel, or on ice.
Canned lobster is a food a wise man avoids, though, to be sure, he
runs perhaps no greater risk in eating it than in consuming many other
things, tinned or untinned. Millions of dollars' worth of canned
lobsters, crabs, and salmon are eaten every year.
A new American delicacy hails from Canada: lobster rarebit, a compound
of certain parts of the lobster which had previously been thrown
away as waste by the canners. The annual output of canned lobster by
the Eastern Provinces of Canada now amounts to about ten million
cans, worth about $3,000,000. Lobster rarebit, which is said to be a
highly appetizing delicacy, easily digested and nourishing may, it is
believed, in time equal the money value of canned lobsters. Consul
Frank Deedmeyer, of Charlottetown, gave these details at the time when
lobster rarebit was first introduced:
Canned lobster, as known to the trade, consists of the meat taken
from the claws and the tail. The whole of the body proper is now
rejected by the packers, and it has heretofore been used in the
maritime Provinces of Canada as a fertilizer. In the rejected
portion is found a crescent-shaped meaty layer to which the tail
is attached and the liver. Lobster rarebit is a compound of this
meaty layer, of the liver, and of the roe, to which some spice is
added. The first named of the components used is the fattest part
of the crustacean; the liver, glandular, is large and retains a
high percentage of bile. The number of eggs found in a lobster
is estimated from 5,000 to 40,000, according to size. The three
ingredients are mixed in these proportions: Six-tenths meat,
three-tenths liver, and one-tenth roe.
While the efforts to propagate the Atlantic lobster have met with
scant success on the Pacific Coast there are other marine delicacies
to console those who dwell on the shore from Southern California to
Washington and British Columbia; among them the abalone of Catalina,
which makes delicious soup, the razor clam and monster specimens of
other clams in Washington waters, oysters, huge crabs, and above all,
crawfish.
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