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Close your eyes, and picture that large, mouth-watering lobster waiting on your plate for you to crack open and enjoy. You’d be hard-pressed to think of anything that sounds better. However, don’t rush out for a live lobster dinner just yet. Wouldn’t it be fun to learn a little bit about the critter you’re craving before you indulge?

Once upon a time, America was peopled by only Native Americans, and lobsters were plentiful. They were so plentiful, in fact, that the Native Americans used them as fertilizer for farm fields and fish bait. They never ate them! Yuck!

The early European settlers which graced our shores didn’t eat lobster meat, either. They’d pick them up by hand to use as fertilizer or to feed to the lowest creatures of their society, slaves, indentured servants, children, and the poor. After years of this practice, indentured servants begin to protest the constant lobster diet. In fact, they went so far as having it written into their contracts that they would never have to eat lobster more than three times a week.

Until the early 19th century, people collected lobsters by hand from tide pools along the shore. The first lobster traps didn’t appear until around 1850. Lobster meat was only sold in cans, and the canned meat just didn’t have much flavor, so it wasn’t popular with consumers.

It wasn’t until our modern transportation system developed that live lobsters became sought-after luxury items. Shipped to the big cities, they quickly became expensive luxury food for the higher classes of our population.

If you’re like I am, you may feel a little squeamish about seeing your dinner lying serene and green in a tank one minute and bright-red and cooked on your plate the next. This feeling, too, dates back to the beginning of lobster-eating. Lobster experts swear, however, that it’s the only way to have fresh lobster.

My great-grandmother lived most of the way through the 1960s. People around her were eating lobsters and other seafood, but she refused to even consider the possibility. It’s not that she was a picky eater, because she had been raised to eat everything that was put on her plate. It’s just that her sensibilities had been honed during America’s Victorian era when ladies would never even think about something as ghastly as tossing a live lobster into boiling water. Pass me the smelling salts, please!

It’s amazing how tastes change over the years. For centuries the succulent meat of much-maligned lobsters went unnoticed and unappreciated. Then, almost overnight, lobsters moved from obscurity into the fanciest restaurants of the time.