The external spawn adhering to the tail of the female lobster, when not highly developed, is edible, and is used in garnishing and making lobster butter, paste, and cardinal-fish sauces.
It is a curious fact, that the lobster changes or re-makes a shell from eight to ten times the first year, five to seven the second, three to four the third, and from two to three the fourth year. So says Professor G. O. Sars of Norway, about the European lobster, whose habits agree more or less closely with those of the American lobster.
Soft-shell Lobster not edible.—After the fifth year the change of shell is only annual. A soft-shell or shedder lobster, unlike the soft-shell crab, is not edible, and if eaten is likely to produce ill effects. In a soft condition the lobster itself is sick, and is therefore unfit for food.
Selecting Lobsters.—Always select a firm shell, of a deep dark-green color. Light-colored, thin-shelled lobsters are likely to be lean and poor. When plunged into the boiling water, the joints contract, and the tail draws under, provided the lobster was alive at the time of immersion. If dead when boiled, the tendons are relaxed, the claws hang loosely, the tail will not possess a spring-like tenacity when straightened out. Select the former, and reject the latter.
Value of the Lobster as Food.—According to Professor Atwater of Middletown, Conn., the nutritive value of the flesh of the lobster, compared with beef as a standard and reckoned at 100, is 61 to 97. Forty per cent of the lobster is edible, the remainder is shell and waste.
Buckland says, “That phosphorus exists in large quantities, may be easily proved. A lobster in hot weather, when it ceases to be fresh, assumes a highly phosphorescent appearance when seen in the dark, equal if not superior to that of a glow-worm or luminous centipede. This light increases by friction.... The presence of phosphorus in the lobster is of great importance to the consumers of these sea luxuries. There is no substance which conveys phosphorus so readily into the human system in an agreeable form, and which the system so readily and quickly assimilates, as the flesh of crabs and lobsters.”
Broiled Lobster.—Select alive and active lobster not less than ten and a half inches long. (If below this measurement, the dealer should be arrested for breaking the law which protects the lobster.) Split it in two lengthwise, which instantly kills it. Remove the entrail through the fleshy part of the tail, and the crop or stomach near the head. This done, there are two ways of preparing it for table. One is as follows:—
Remove the flesh from the tail, and brush over it a little melted butter or olive-oil; broil it gently, but not too well done. Heat the shell, put the meat back in the shell again, add more butter, salt, pepper, and serve on hot plates. The body parts may be boiled, and furnish dainty pickings for a late meal.
The other way is that which is generally adopted by restaurants. Brush a little butter over the entire half of the green lobster; broil the shell side thoroughly first, then turn, and broil the other. Serve with maitre-d’hôtel sauce.
A lobster that has once been boiled and then broiled is so thoroughly over-cooked as to be very indigestible.