99 
Stewed Porpoise. 
The porpoise, though not now considered a palatable 
dish, was in earlier times frequently eaten. It was even 
thought a dainty, and was dressed in a variety of ways. 
Sometimes it was prepared with a sauce made of fine 
bread-crumbs, mixed with vinegar and sugar; at other 
times it was roasted or stewed with blanched almonds or 
onions. Andrew Boorde, in his Dietary, 1542, speaks 
contemptuously of its culinary properties: “ A yonge 
porpesse, the which kynde of fysshe is nother praysed in 
the Olde Testament nor in physycke ” (Early English 
Text Society, ed. Furnivall, 1870, p. 268.) 
The Ork, or Orca, was apparently the same as the 
grampus, thresher, or ardluk. It is not 
unlike the porpoise in shape, but larger 
and more powerful. It has been invested by poets with 
mythical powers. Du Bartas writes :— 
“ When on the surges I perceive, from far, 
Th’ ork, whirl-poole whale, or huffing physeter, 
Methinks I see the wandering ile again 
(Ortygian Delos) floating on the main.” 
(.Divine Weekes, p. 40.) 
Olaus Magnus tells us that— 
“ an orca is like a hull turned inside outward; a beast with fierce 
teeth, with which as with the stern of a ship he rends the whales guts, 
and tears his calves body, or he quickly runs and drives him up and 
down with his prickly back, that he makes him run to fords and shores. 
But the whale that cannot turn its huge body, not knowing how to 
resist the wily orca, puts all its hopes in flight: yet that flight is weak, 
because this sluggish beast, burdened with its own weight, wants one 
to guide her, to fly to the foords to escape the dangers.” (Page 226.) 
Jonas Poole, one of the early whalers, gives a similar, 
but less exaggerated, description of this cetacean. The 
grampus is in truth the great terror of the inhabitants 
of the northern seas. Not content with seals and por¬ 
poises, it will even attack large whales, and its appearance 
is sufficient to put whole shoals of the latter to flight. 
