Past Is Prologue

The Emotional Toll of Cooking Lobster

And the history of how these crustaceans became a ‘fancy’ food

Lobster roll. Chez Sasha. Photos courtesy of the author.

I’m a dyed-in-the-wool New Englander. I’ve lived in London for nearly a decade, yet I still staunchly meditate on the following stations of the cross: I am vocal and vociferous behind the wheel. I feel a personal kinship to the works of Stephen King. But, most importantly, I’m not a little bitch about the winter, and summer is not summer without a lobster roll.

After being stuck at home in lockdown for months, I decided to treat myself with a seafood delivery box. The quarantine gods were smiling because, for the cool price of £20, I could add two Cornish lobsters to the assortment.

Derived from the Old English word “loppe” meaning “spider,” these marine arachnids are unique. In their native Maine or Cornish coastal habitats, I am told these odd, spiny, asymmetrical creatures can grow indefinitely, though scientists are not entirely certain how large they ultimately could get. Commercial traps are designed to catch only specimens of a certain size, but the Guinness Book of World Records clocked a 44.3 pounder off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1977.

Besides living indefinitely without predatory interference, they’re wicked awesome. They taste with…