Thursday, May 26, 2011

The blubber doughnut

Moby Dick, Ch. 65:
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.

Re "oly-cooks" or "oilcakes" (an old Dutch term for doughnut) see this previous post on the appalling doughnut taco. Melville continues:
[the sperm whale] 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.
I must have been thirteen or so the last time I read the book, and must have skimmed over everything not directly related to the plot. Which is to say, essentially everything.

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