Last night while playing Balderdash with the Brothers Sisters I happened to draw the word dunderfunk. Contestant guesses included "a state of apathy and dissociation," and "the sound made while beat-boxing," while the correct definition was given as "a dessert dish made of baked biscuits and molasses."
Which sounds delicious. Except as anyone who has ever sailed the scurvy-riddled seas knows, dunderfunk is not so much a delicacy as a poor man's dish also known as Scouse, Lob-scouse, Soft-Tack, Soft-Tommy, Skillagalee, Burgoo, Dough-boys, Lob-Dominion, and Dog's Body.
This information comes courtesy of a well-informed wikisource, though I, of course, typed out the following passage from my great-granduncle's autographed printing of Melville's, "White Jacket" before finding the text online. It reads, as follows:
One clear, cold morning, while we were yet running away from the Cape, a raw boned, crack-pated Down Easter, belonging to the Waist, made his appearance at the mast, dolefully exhibiting a blackened tin pan, bearing a few crusty traces of some sort of a sea-pie, which had been cooked in it.
"Well, sir, what now?" said the Lieutenant of the Deck, advancing.
"They stole it, sir; all my nice dunderfunk, sir; they did, sir," whined the Down Easter, ruefully holding up his pan. "Stole your dunderfunk! what's that?"
"Dunderfunk, sir, dunderfunk; a cruel nice dish as ever man put into him."
"Speak out, sir; what's the matter?"
"My dunderfunk, sir--as elegant a dish of dunderfunk as you ever see, sir--they stole it, sir!"
"Go forward, you rascal!" cried the Lieutenant, in a towering rage, "or else stop your whining. Tell me, what's the matter?"
"Why, sir, them 'ere two fellows, Dobs and Hodnose, stole my dunderfunk."
"Once more, sir, I ask what that dundledunk is? Speak!" "As cruel a nice------"
"Be off, sir! sheer!" and muttering something about non compos mentis, the Lieutenant stalked away; while the Down Easter beat a melancholy retreat, holding up his pan like a tambourine, and making dolorous music on it as he went.
HM, 1850
So do you any of you have any good recipes for the stuff? When it comes to a dish like dunderfunk, I've heard it's best to separate the good stuff from the junk.
2 comments:
I like the idea of a dish being so "nice" it's "cruel." Is that some sort of etymological descendant of "wicked?"
Is that anything like Dundefunk, Egypt? And how come Dunderfunk Egypt isn't actually in Egypt?
Dunderfunkin-A.
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