Langoustines: Scotland's Prawns and Their Journey to Spain

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Landings and export figures are published annually by Scottish Government fisheries statistics and vary from year to year, so this card avoids precise figures. The natural history, names and culinary history below draw on The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014), a reference work that predates the most recent fisheries data.

The creature

established The langoustine is a slender, pale orange crustacean with long thin claws. It lives in burrows in muddy seabeds and emerges to feed, which makes catches depend on time of day and light.

established The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) describes it as a small lobster, Nephrops norvegicus, found from Iceland down to Morocco and in the western and central Mediterranean, especially the Adriatic. It reaches a maximum length of 24 centimetres, not counting the claws. The shell is pink, rose or orange-red, often quite pale, and the claws are banded red and white. It leaves its burrow mainly at night to feed. The Companion adds that it has several relations in South American waters, sometimes sold as "lobsterettes".

Three names and a fourth

established The Companion explains the names. "Norway lobster" simply reflects how abundant the creature is off the Norwegian coast. "Langoustine" is French. "Scampi" is Italian, from the Adriatic, where cooks had many recipes for it.

shared "Dublin Bay prawn" is less certain. The Companion's main explanation is that fishing boats coming into Dublin Bay often had langoustines aboard, which were sold to street vendors and hawked round the city under that name. Others say they were caught in the bay itself. Neither version is documented in detail.

established In Scotland the everyday name is simply "prawn", which can confuse visitors who expect a small warm-water shrimp. In North America, the Companion notes, "scampi" has drifted the other way and now means large or medium shrimp, especially cooked in butter with garlic and white wine.

Scotland's prawns

established Until the mid-twentieth century, langoustines were often thrown back or sold cheaply. Growing demand, first for scampi in Britain and then from European markets, transformed them into one of the most valuable species landed in Scotland. In Scotland they are commonly called prawns.

shared The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) dates the change to the 1950s, when British fishermen first began to think the creature worth landing; the Irish, it says, had been eating it for longer. The Companion then qualifies its own statement: in 1867 W. B. Lord, in Crab, Shrimp and Lobster Lore, reported that many Norway lobsters were imported to London, and that Billingsgate sold four of them for every true lobster. The likeliest reading is that there was a London market for imported Norway lobster in Victorian times, but that British boats, including Scottish ones, did not target it until after the Second World War. Exactly when Scottish landings began in earnest is not settled by these sources.

shared The food historian Annette Hope, in A Caledonian Feast (1987), puts the turn a decade later. Until the 1960s, she writes, Scottish fishermen regarded the Norway lobster, like the squid, "simply as a nuisance". The change came from abroad: British tourists in Spain and Italy found it treated as a delicacy, demand followed at home, and by the 1980s scampi was on menus "good and bad" across the country. She calls it perhaps the most interesting case of a change in public taste for fish. Her 1960s and the Companion's 1950s need not conflict; a few boats may have landed the catch in the 1950s before it became worth targeting. Both accounts agree that the shellfish moved from by-catch to prize within living memory.

established The Companion records that in the later twentieth century the Norway lobster became a standard item on British menus, usually under its Italian name, scampi.

Missing from the old Scottish kitchen

established The langoustine's late arrival in Scottish cooking shows in the classic record of it. The folklorist F. Marian McNeill, in The Scots Kitchen (1929; second edition 1963), gives a long account of Scottish shellfish but does not mention the langoustine, Norway lobster or Dublin Bay prawn at all. Her shellfish are the oyster, which she calls "the prince of shellfish", the partan (the large edible crab, made into the soup partan bree), the lobster, mussels, cockles, whelks ("wulks") and periwinkles ("buckies"). She records the old Edinburgh street cries for many of them, "Caller ou!" (fresh oysters), "Caller partans!" and "Cockles and wulks!", and the Old Town stalls where shellfish were sold in saucers with their condiments.

established McNeill also describes the change that made fish like the langoustine worth landing. In the early twentieth century, she writes, filleting as a commercial process revolutionised the trade, and trawler owners began to sell fish that had previously been thrown overboard as too small or too unattractive. The langoustine's own rise came later, but it followed the same pattern: a catch once discarded as by-catch became valuable once a market and a way of preparing it were found.

shared Annette Hope (1987) explains why the old shellfish list is so coastal. Before fast transport, shellfish were eaten mainly by people who lived by the sea, usually boiled and served with a little butter or cream. Railways and ice let oysters, crabs, lobsters, mussels and scallops reach London, Liverpool and Leicester in the nineteenth century, while the poorest coastal families, especially during the Clearances, lived on cockles, whelks, winkles and limpets gathered from the shore. In her own day, she noted, crabs and mussels were common again and scallops and oysters came mostly from farms. The langoustine joined this list late, through restaurants rather than the shore.

Trawl and creel

established Most langoustines are caught by trawlers towing nets across the seabed. On the west coast, smaller boats also catch them in creels, baited pots left on the seabed. Creel-caught langoustines are usually larger, less damaged and can be kept alive for export, fetching higher prices. Creel fishing is often promoted as having less impact on the seabed.

Exported

established Most Scottish langoustines are exported, particularly to Spain, France and Italy, where they are eaten grilled or in dishes such as paella. Live langoustines are shipped in chilled tanks. In Britain, the most familiar form has long been scampi, breaded langoustine tails.

In the kitchen

established The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) advises that Norway lobsters can be cooked like large prawns, for example brushed with olive oil and grilled. Most of the meat is in the tail, which is why the breaded tail became the standard British product. Whole langoustines are usually boiled or grilled briefly and served in the shell.

• Langoustines are called "prawns" in Scotland.
• They are also known as Norway lobster and Dublin Bay prawn.
• Scampi is made from langoustine tails.
• Creel-caught langoustines are often sold live.
• Most Scottish langoustines are exported to Europe.
• "Norway lobster" refers to how plentiful the creature is off the Norwegian coast.
• A langoustine's claws are banded red and white.
• In 1867 Billingsgate market was said to sell four Norway lobsters for every true lobster.
• In North America "scampi" usually means large shrimp cooked in garlic butter, not langoustine.

• Disputed: Scotland's share of world landings. It is often put at around a third or more, but figures vary by year and source.
• Myth: Langoustines were unknown in Britain before the 1950s. Imported Norway lobsters were sold in quantity at Billingsgate in the 1860s, four for every true lobster in 1867.
• Disputed: The origin of "Dublin Bay prawn". One account says boats landed them at Dublin and street vendors hawked them under that name. Others say they were caught in the bay itself. Neither is documented in detail.
• Disputed: When Scottish landings began. The Companion says the 1950s and Annette Hope (1987) the 1960s. The two need not conflict, but the sources do not settle it.
• Myth: Langoustines are a long-standing traditional Scottish dish. McNeill's The Scots Kitchen does not mention them, and their importance is modern.