ABSTRACT
The recorded history of the use of crayfish as well as of their culture and management in Europe extends back hundreds of years, at least to the Middle Ages. In central Europe, Emperor Maximilian I of the Habsburg Empire and the Archbishops of Salzburg gave written orders on crayfish catching. Monasteries of the time in the fifteenth century had their own ways of cultivating, holding, and cooking crayfish (Spitzy 1973), apparently to be consumed especially as a lenten fare. Earlier still, in the old Roman Empire, crayfish appear in a recipe from the third century A.D. published by Caelius in De re culinaria (Lagerqvist and Nathorst-Boos 1980).
