Is it fishy? It’s got 53 times the ammount of fat as human milk. Speaking of which what are the relatives fat contents of human and other milks. hmmmm.
Can’t say . . . but in Paul Theroux’s (thinly fictionalized) autobiographical novel My Secret History there’s a chapter titled “Whale Steaks” about his adolescence in Massachusetts. Seems there was an eatery there in the 1950s which advertised Whale Steaks, and he always wondered what it would be like to eat one.
Well, he went through a lot of weird adolescent shit on the way to getting a chance to eat Whale Steak, and when he finally sat down to it, he wasn’t able to stomach it. He reported that it tasted fishy (of course).
CHICKEN!!!
Sorry… couldn’t resist.
:eek:
Sorry, it’s been awhile since I wrote about various mammals’ milk fat content, but, as I recall, whale milk is slightly more than 50% fat, human milk closer to skim/1% levels. (Cow milk is 4% fat.)
But this is just from long-ago memories. I’ll check for cites.
Don’t know about the tastes, though…
I’d imagine it would be extremely creamy and rich because of that high fat content (whale calves need to gain /enormous/ amounts of weight by the day)…however I doubt it would taste ‘fishy’ or have any other strange taste. Milk is milk ;>
Ask at a Japanese restaurant, they know what whale tastes like. Ours did.
Here’s a link. The table is way down the page.
http://classes.aces.uiuc.edu/AnSci308/milkcomp.html
I stand corrected.
Human milk: 4.5% fat (comparable to cow milk, which varies by breed)
Whale: 34.8% fat
Gray seal: 53.2% fat
Hmm. “Whale” is kind of vague when referring to the entire cetacean group. I could have sworn that Blue Whale milk had the highest fat content. I’ll check more.
Have you tried various types of milk? Goat milk, sheep milk, human milk, lama’s milk, horse’s milk, and bear’s milk all taste very different… so I’m guessing that whale’s milk would pick up from what they eat. Would it have a higher salt content? I know they don’t eat fish, but what about the killer whales… hmmmm.
This one says “35-50%” fat.
http://www.bigsurcalifornia.org/whalesblue.html
This one, 45-50%.
http://www.zoomwhales.com/subjects/whales/species/Bluewhale.shtml
It’s a lot. I imagine it would be rather creamy.
Heavy cream is 37% fat according to the USDA.
Butter is 81% fat. So mix them half and half to get a fair approximation. (And, yes, I imagine it would taste pretty fishy.)
(don’t mind me, just rambling here ;> )
Well I don’t mean all milk tastes exactly the same there…perhaps I used a poor choice of words. I know there are subtle differences in different types of milk. I’ve had cow’s milk, goat’s milk, and even remember the taste of my mother’s milk from when my sister was born (kinda sweet and had an almond-like flavor, as I recall 
) But I guess my point is that pretty much all milk probably would have that same…creamy…milky taste, right? I can’t claim to be an expert on the subject, but from what I know about biology and anatomy I don’t think that an animal’s diet would impact the taste of milk in that way…for example a whale’s milk shouldn’t taste just like the fish it eats…am I making sense? 
I dunno. Good question! 
I can’t help you with what it tastes like, but I have two things to say:
- A grey whale’s tongue weighs 3,000 lbs
- Hi, Opal!
- You’re watching waaaaay too much Animal Planet.
In Ulysses, Leopold Bloom (who spends half his time thinking about food) ponders the question:
Actually, for humans at least, the milk taste is influenced quite a bit by the mother’s diet. It’s even been speculated that infants aquire a taste for the local cuisine by tasting hints of it while breast feeding, and these tastes persist into adulthood.
Arjuna34
Bear milk? Bear milk?!?
Now there’s a job I wouldn’t want…
<scanario> After an emergency call from the hospital, a panicked spouse rushes to the hospital:
“Honey, what happened?”
“First day on the job at the dairy, and because I was the newbie, they got me to milk the bears…” :eek:
Would this hold for infants who were not breast-fed?
I don’t see how a formula-fed baby would get any hint of local tastes, beyond any similarity of the formula with the local food.
Arjuna34
Victor B. Schaeffer talks about the fat content of whale’s milk in his wonderful book “The Year of the Whale”. It’s more tha 50% fat for a sperm whale, he says, but he doesn’t say what it tastes like.
Intriguing. It could taste like a milkshake for all we know, but the logistics of it are extremely difficult.
How, exactly, do you milk a whale? Do you winch it up out of the water? Make some sort of underwater milking machine (with some way to keep the salt water out)? Or just nudge a nursing calf out of the way and go for it?
…actually, it’d probably be easier if you’re willing to settle for orca. Good luck finding a lactating whale in the wild.
I’m betting on a fishy taste.
I know that if you have a milk cow, you have to keep her from eating wild onions, or the milk winds up tasting oniony. So I think it’s probably a safe assumption that the seafood diet of whales lends their milk a fishy flavor.
I was thinking that spoke-
but I also thought, most whales eat plankton. How does plankton taste? does it taste fishy?
I can understand for killer whales and such.
I guess an easy test would be to taste the breast milk of a human female in a sea area, someone who subsisted on mostly fish and seafood. That might steer us in the right direction.
Well, Jules Verne had, if not an informed opinion, at least an opinion on this question:
So Verne suggests that the milk of the “southern whale”, at least, tastes indistinguishable from cow’s milk. Where he got this information, or whether he just made it up, I have no idea.