CHAPTER 65
The Whale as a Dish
That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and,
like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so
outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and
philosophy of it.
It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale
was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large prices there.
Also, that in Henry VIIIth’s time, a certain cook of the court obtained a
handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten with
barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a species of whale.
Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine eating. The meat is made
into balls about the size of billiard balls, and being well seasoned and
spiced might be taken for turtle-balls or veal balls. The old monks of
Dunfermline were very fond of them. They had a great porpoise grant from
the crown.
The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands
be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you
come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes
away your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men like Stubb,
nowadays partake of cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are not so
fastidious. We all know how they live upon whales, and have rare old
vintages of prime old train oil. Zogranda, one of their most famous doctors,
recommends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly juicy and
nourishing. And this reminds me that certain Englishmen, who long ago
were accidentally left in Greenland by a whaling vessel— that these men
actually lived for several months on the mouldy scraps of whales which had
been left ashore after trying out the blubber. Among the Dutch whalemen
these scraps are called “fritters”; which, indeed, they greatly resemble,
being brown and crisp, and smelling something like old Amsterdam
housewives’ dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh. They have such an
eatable look that the most self-denying stranger can hardly keep his hands
off.
But what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish, is his
exceeding richness. He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to be
delicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating as the
buffalo’s (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid pyramid of
fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that is; like the
transparent, half jellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the third month of its
growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for butter. Nevertheless, many
whalemen have a method of absorbing it into some other substance, and
then partaking of it. In the long try watches of the night it is a common
thing for the seamen to dip their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let
them fry there awhile. Many a good supper have I thus made.
In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish.
The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump,
whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings),
they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess, in
flavor somewhat resembling calves’ head, which is quite a dish among some
epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among the epicures,
by continually dining upon calves’ brains, by and by get to have a little
brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf’s head from their own
heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination. And that is the
reason why a young buck with an intelligent looking calf’s head before him,
is somehow one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of
reproachfully at him, with an “Et tu Brute!” expression.
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous
that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that
appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned:
i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too
by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was
regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his
trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if
any murderer does. Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the
crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does
not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal’s jaw? Cannibals? who is not a
cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a
lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more
tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for
thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground
and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.
But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding
insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and
enlightened gourmand, dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made
of?—what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And
what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a
feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of the
Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his
circulars? It is only within the last month or two that that society passed a
resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.
