Before joining Captain Ahab’s pursuit of the great white whale, the narrator Ishmael and the harpooner Queequeg take lodgings at the Try Pots Inn in Nantucket, where the bellowed menu consists solely of ‘Clam or Cod?’ When the landlady Mrs Hussey takes the former as answer, Ishmael starts to worry.
‘Queequeg, do you think we can make out a supper for us both on one clam?’ When that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! Hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuits, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt… surpassingly excellent.
From Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
