Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Porpoises as Fine Eating

Porpoises remain esteemed as fine dining to this day, with their meat typically formed into spherical portions comparable in size to billiard balls. When properly seasoned and spiced, these preparations closely resemble turtle or veal balls in texture and appearance. The old monastic community at Dunfermline demonstrated particular enthusiasm for porpoise consumption, holding a substantial royal grant specifically authorizing their procurement.

The Whale’s Enormous Size

Among whalers themselves, the whale would be universally acknowledged as a noble dish if not for its staggering dimensions. The practical reality of confronting a meat pie nearly one hundred feet long effectively destroys any appetite for consumption. This overwhelming scale renders the whale impractical as civilized fare, with only the most unprejudiced palates, like Stubb’s, willing to partake of cooked whale meat in contemporary times.

Esquimaux Dietary Practices

The Esquimaux (Inuit) demonstrate far less fastidiousness regarding whale consumption than civilized societies. They sustain themselves entirely on whale products and maintain exceptional reserves of aged train oil. Zogranda, a celebrated Inuit physician, prescribes strips of blubber for infant nutrition, praising its exceptional juiciness and nutritional value. This indigenous expertise in whale utilization provides an instructive contrast to the delicate sensibilities of land-dwelling epicures.

Whale Scraps Called Fritters

Certain English sailors stranded in Greenland by a whaling vessel survived for months on moldy whale scraps remaining after the blubber had been rendered. Dutch whalers term these remnants “fritters,” a name fitting their brown, crisp appearance. These scraps bear resemblance to old Amsterdam doughnuts or oly-cooks when fresh, possessing such an appetizing aspect that even the most disciplined stranger struggles to resist sampling them.

The Whale’s Richness

The whale’s primary disqualification as a civilized dish lies in its excessive fatness, rendering it the sea’s overfed prize ox, too oily for delicate palates. While the hump would rival buffalo hump as fine dining, its solid pyramid of fat prevents such appreciation. The spermaceti itself proves too rich to function as butter substitute, though whalemen have devised methods of absorbing it into ship-biscuit during night watches, creating simple but satisfying meals fried directly in oil pots.

Sperm Whale Brains as a Dish

In the case of smaller Sperm Whales, the brains constitute a highly prized dish. Workers extract the two plump, whitish lobes from the skull using an axe, resembling large puddings, then combine them with flour to create a delectable preparation. The flavor recalls calves’ head, itself a delicacy among certain epicures. The narrator wryly observes that young bucks who continuously consume calves’ brains reportedly develop enhanced discriminatory capacity, though this comes at the expense of encountering calves’ heads that seem to reproach them with a mournful “Et tu Brute!” expression.

Philosophical Reflection on Cannibalism

The narrator probes the deeper meaning behind civilized revulsion at whale consumption, attributing it partly to the horror of eating a freshly murdered sea creature by its own light. However, this disgust invites comparison to the first human who murdered an ox—was he not equally a murderer in the ox’s reckoning? A Saturday night meat market presents an array of dead quadrupeds for crowds to observe, suggesting that all humans partake in a form of cannibalism by consuming other creatures. The narrator predicts that even a Fijian who salted a missionary during famine will receive more tolerable judgment than civilized gourmands who cruelly fatten geese for paté-de-foie-gras.

Civilized Hypocrisy

The chapter culminates in exposing the hypocrisy of civilized diners who recoil at whale consumption while engaging in comparable practices. The knife handle used to carve roast beef consists of ox bones, while the teeth picks after goose consumption are crafted from the same bird’s feathers. Even the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Ganders wrote official circulars with goose quill pens until recently switching to steel nibs. These revelations expose the arbitrary boundaries that civilized society draws between acceptable and unacceptable forms of consumption.

CAPÍTULO 66. The Shark Massacre.

When a captured Sperm Whale is brought alongside late at night after long and weary toil, it is not customary to proceed at once with the business of cutting it in. This laborious process requires all hands and is not quickly completed. The common practice is to take in all sail, lash the helm a’lee, and send everyone below to their hammocks until daylight, with anchor-watches set in rotation to ensure everything remains secure.