WHALES I HAVE EATEN

Hokitika Guardian, 20 July 1926, Page 3

WHALES I HAVE EATEN

(By J. J. Bell, the Scottish novelist, author of “ We Alaegreegor.”) Glider me title of “ Pickled AYhale ” the “ London Daily Alail ” gave a brief account the other day of curing of whale meat, on the island of Harris. The meat was being exported to the Congo. The Seats would not eat it, though whale meat used to bo sent, to Germany from Harris before the war and was often eaten by Norwegian whalers. Whale meat ns a food is nothing new. For many years it has formed the bulk of the animal food of the Japanese lower and middle classes, while on the Pacific coast of North America there are canneries sending out a product said to be superior to much of the canned beef on the A meriea-ii market. No doubt the first whalemen in history, the Basques, fought the Biscay whale a thousand years ago as much for the food as for the oil it yielded. And at the moment, to mention but one more instance, “a: Norwegian firm operating from Algeciras is doing a large trade-in whale meat with the Spaniards. But not any sort of whale will serve. The Sperm’s flesh is so disgustingly oily that only a starving man could tackle it. But the Right while is quite edible; better still are tbe Finners, and best of all the Humpback. A Humpback steak, eaten after a sixhours bunt along tbe rim of the Greenland ice against a hitter wind, is not at all bad, though it does retain a certain greasiness, partly due. no doubt, to its having been cooked in a frying-pan in the tiny galley of the whale-boat. Cooked on a proper grill and nicely served it might well pass for a bit of bullock.

And there are reasons why it should lie good feeding for mail. The whale lives in a clean element, is a clean leader, and is not subject to disease; If the meat is a trifle courser in grain than the beef we eat every day. it is neither tough nor indigestible. Fried with onions it is splendid—if the eater is in a whnle-lioat, with plenty of fresh air ami exercise.

The meat,, by the way. has nothing to ilo with teh blubber, that blanket of oil, from a few inches to a toot thick, which after death becomes as resistant to a punch of a fist as solid rubber ami is peeled front the j carcase in tremendous strips by steam power. One point more. The meat to he edible must come from an almost freshly killed whale. A day old is often too old; it depends on the climate. No dead animal goes “ high ” so quickly ns n whale; hut possibly decomposition is hastened by the heat engendered by the bomb which enters with the harpoon, and also by the warm air pumped from the engine-room into tbe carcase to give it buoyancy. Altogether there is no good reason why we should avoid whale-meat. A fashionable restaurant putting it on the card at 10s fid per portion would probably start at least an epicurean ilemanti. Only it would have to be the cured sort, unless the supply were “delivered bv ’plane direct from the whaling grounds.”