On Food and Cooking

massive cephalothorax.
As a crustacean grows, it must periodically
cast off the old cuticle and create a larger new
one. This process is called molting. The
animal constructs a new, flexible cuticle
under the old one from its body’s protein and
energy reserves. It squeezes its shrunken body
through weakened joints in the old shell, then
pumps up itself with water — from 50 to
100% of its original weight — to stretch the
new cuticle to its maximum volume. It then
hardens the new cuticle by cross-linking and
mineralizing it, and gradually replaces its
body water with muscle and other tissues.
Molting means that the quality of
crustacean flesh is highly variable, and this is
why wild harvests are seasonal, with the
seasons depending on the particular animal
and location. An actively growing animal has
dense, abundant muscle, while an animal
preparing to molt loses muscle and liver mass,
and a newly molted animal may be as much