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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Oysters were poverty food right up to Dicken's day. Times change!

If I was a lobster (they can live over 50 years, so its not impossible given I'm old now) I'd be delighted if people stopped pulling me out of the sea for no cents.

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My family is from Prince Edward Island and in the past you wouldn’t want to bring lobster to school in your lunch. You would be teased for being poor.

It is kind of like eating bugs.

Completely sensible save for cultural stigma?

It's both exactly like eating bugs and nothing like eating bugs.

It's exactly like eating bugs in that crustaceans are actually related to bugs, but nothing like eating bugs in the sense that the "grossest part" of eating bugs is that the whole thing is consumed; eyeballs, organs, brains, poop, shell, etc.

Bugs are absolutely socially acceptable to eat in the US and Canada, provided they came out of water.

[Crawdads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crayfish), lobsters, crabs, and shrimp are all arthropods.

Or "insects", as my 1980's Massachusetts buddy used to say.

PEI here too, yeah you often hear stories of how they were crawling on the beaches and were often used as fertilizer.

So were lobsters:

> Dirt-cheap because they were so copious, lobsters were routinely fed to prisoners, apprentices, slaves and children during the colonial era and beyond. In Massachusetts, some servants allegedly sought to avoid lobster-heavy diets by including stipulations in their contracts that they would only be served the shellfish twice a week.

https://www.history.com/news/a-taste-of-lobster-history

Note the "allegedly" in there. Historians have tried to dig up evidence of that, and not found anything.

And if it was common enough to be in many contracts, we would have found at least one example.

I think its really interesting how most people imagine expensive things taste better just because they are expensive, specifically lobster, caviar. They exist in scarcity right now and thats the only distinction as there are longer periods of time where they weren't "delicacies" but still tasty parts of a meal.

Sorry, but I love caviar. In fact any sort if fish roe is good. It does not have to be expensive. In Russia they eat fish roe/caviar on buttered bread for breakfast. It's really good.

> as there are longer periods of time where they weren't "delicacies" but still tasty parts of a meal.

Yeah that agrees with what I wrote. Why are you apologizing for thinking you are disagreeing

Hmm, well, counter-example here. Lobster just tastes great, no matter how cheap it gets. ;-)

Nothing like a fresh lobster roll on the Eastern seaboard!

I mean you can slather just about anything in melted butter, salt and pepper, and put it on a toasted buttered bun, and find it tastes pretty good

I think you, and others, misread what I wrote. I said they were always deemed tasty, but people covet them as even more tasty luxuries because they are expensive. As opposed to the capabilities that a chef's rare experiments can achieve in a similar price range.

In my experience most people just drown it in butter or mayonnaise or other toppings. Anything tastes good when smothered in butter.

The story I’d heard is that lobster became a delicacy when it was shipped to the US interior, where butter was relatively cheap and plentiful. Seems kind of implausible—wouldn’t it be easier to ship the butter to the coast?—but it’s a story.

There's also the aspect that, as the price goes up, the more it'll be cooked by more expensive/better chefs -- which presumably produce better food, or at least, better looking food (and if you believe in eating with your eyes, translates to better food)

In which case, it does actually taste better as a group. It probably finds better recipes as more experienced cooks take a stab at it (whereas before, it was so low-class few would likely even consider doing anything with it beyond the simplest/cheapest combinations).

These kinds of things are usually compounding, or even feedback loops; it's rarely useful to only look at a single step of impact. Though I wouldn't doubt cost isn't a part of the explanation (and ofc it goes the other way too -- good things made cheap, cheapen the perceived value. Perhaps they were also good when it was cheap... But cost was so low you wouldn't accept it as good-eatings)

Making the broth for lobster fra diavolo for example

This is so true. Lobster is not particularly flavorful on its own. People typically drown it in butter, salt, and maybe some Old Bay seasoning here in the US. It has always been pretty obvious to me that folks are enjoying the salt and the butter probably more than the lobster!

In India it gets drowned in spices, and really mainly serves for texture, but it's a pretty damn good texture.

And crustations generally are a very satisfying meat to bite into

You missed deep fat fried lobster. Yes, it's a thing. And quite frankly for what it is, it's delicious.

http://www.binions.com/dining/binions_steakhouse.php

Honestly, I like lobster but the thought of having to eat it twice a week (reg the comment above) makes me nauseous. Some things are much better in moderation.

Is it that hard to imaging people just like something that you don’t? Especially in food, where different people demonstrably have different neurological responses to he chemicals that touch their tongues.

I for one loved lobster long before I had any concept of the meaning of money.

Were you guys eating plain lobster, or enjoying it with lots of butter, salt, seasoning, etc?

It's not just perception. Lobster is not very flavorful on its own. I don't mean, "this flavor is an acquired taste" - I mean there really is not much flavor there.

You keep saying this.

Do you also find it a little too crunchy?

Maybe it’s time to stop eating the shell.

The poor people didn't get to eat fresh lobster or oysters.

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