> Whale beef
I'm sure you meant "meat"
> is very red.
Indeed, it's almost black.
I'm sure you meant "meat"
> is very red.
Indeed, it's almost black.
[0] and afaik culinary names come from the corresponding animal's name in french: beef comes from boeuf (~ox, a castrated bos taurus male), pork from porc, veal is veau, mutton is mouton and venison is venaison (replaced by "gibier" in modern french).
Yes. But I didn't. I called whale meat whale beef. That would be more like calling cow meat cow pork.
While on the topic- why does english have a term for most domestic meats except for 'lamb'. Lamb is lamb, while most other non-game meats have a culinary term.
Consider the dichotomy between sheep & mutton, or pig & pork. In all instances, the word referring to the animal has "old English", or Anglo Saxon roots. Likewise, the word referring to the meat is Latin via French.
This linguistic gap may have its roots in social divisions. In the years following the Norman invasion, the upper class spoke French. They also consumed most of the meat.
The conquered, who by and large did a lot of the agricultural work & raised the livestock, spoke Anglo Saxon ("old English").
Regardless of etymology, though, beef doesn't refer to generic 'meat'.
In French, however, boeuf can also refer to the animal.
"Beef" started switching meaning from the animal to the meat because the meat was something only upper-class, Norman-descended Englishmen could afford. They had less experience with cows in the field, and more experience with cows as slices of meat on a plate. So the snootier, upper-crust "beef" came to be used in the context of food, while the Old English, working-class "cow" was still used by the actual farmers in the fields, who were dealing primarily with the animals. Merchants and middlemen, who dealt primarily in the meat but also in the livestock, adopted the more aspirational "beef" to refer to both. This usage was common until as recently as about 100 years ago. There are probably few people around today who'd call a cow "a beef," though there are still people who'd refer to a herd of cows (or any quantity on a market) as a "beef herd," or a "herd of beef."
I'm not going to go out on a limb and claim that "beef" is common, modern usage when referring to the animal. (And "beeves" is now so uncommon as to sound funny to the modern ear.) But the usage is not entirely extinct, and in instances when differentiating beef from dairy, it's moderately useful.
* Beef from Boeuf
* Mutton from Mouton
* Pork from porc
* etc...That doesn't apply to doner kebabs.