Upper Crustacean

Illustration from "Regarding the Rate of Growth of the American Lobster" (1906)

"A man of taste is seen at once in the array of his breakfast-table. Chocolate, coffee, tea, cream, eggs, ham, tongue, cold fowl, -- all these are good, and bespeak good knowledge in him who sets them forth: but the touchstone is fish; anchovy is the first step, prawns and shrimp the second; and I laud him who reaches even to these: potted chard and lampreys are the third, and a fine stretch of progression; but lobster is, indeed, matter for a May morning, and demands a rare combination of knowledge and virtue in him who sets it forth."
--Thomas Love Peacock, Crotchet Castle (1823)