6 Jan /15

Langostino

The first time the word “langostino” was used in English was almost exactly 100 years ago. Then, as now, the question was one of definition. As the British zoologist Ray Lankester wrote in his 1915 book Diversions of a Naturalist: “We have no word in English to indicate the varied crab-and-shrimp-like creatures of salt and fresh waters.” Lankester described the problem richly and even offered up varying suggestions such as the “very large Mediterranean prawn called Barcelona prawn and langostino,” which he distinguished from “crustaceans, lobsters, langouste, craw fish, cray-fish, ecrevisse and Dublin and Isle of Wight prawns.”

At the end, however, the notion of what exactly a langostino was remained vague, and that uncertainty of classification remains to this very day. In general, a lobster weighs 500 grams or more, while a langostino weighs less than 200 grams. The matter even came up in the US courts when the state of Maine (famously known for its sizeable lobsters) unsuccessfully tried to stop a Californian restaurant chain from selling a dish named “langostino lobster” when in their estimation it only deserved the name “langostino”. The unsolved naming dispute, according to the Maine Lobster Promotion Council, resulted in lost revenues of USD 44 million per year.

Today, the American Food and Drug Administration allows the word “langostino” to be used for three species that are known by a variety of names in English, including the yellow squat lobster, the squat lobster and the lobster krill. But this is not the end of the lobster confusion. Things become even more complicated when one realizes that langostino refers to prawn in Spanish and to crayfish in the Caribbean, while it relates to red shrimp in South America.
In the end, it seems that little progress has been made in the public perception of what the langostino is since the great zoologist Lankester brought up the issue 100 years ago. What is clear, however, is that “langostino” means “little lobster” in Spanish.