Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

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.