Animal and meat names.
What the meat from each animal is called — and the products that come from it.
Animal → meat
| Animal | Meat | Also made into |
|---|---|---|
| Cow / cattle | Beef | Steak, mince, brisket |
| Calf (young cattle) | Veal | Escalope, osso buco |
| Pig | Pork | Bacon, ham, gammon, sausage |
| Sheep (adult) | Mutton | Stew, curry |
| Sheep (young) | Lamb | Chops, roast |
| Deer | Venison | Steak, sausage |
| Goat | Chevon / goat | Curry, stew (kid if young) |
| Chicken | Chicken (poultry) | — |
| Turkey | Turkey (poultry) | — |
| Duck | Duck | Confit, breast |
| Rabbit | Rabbit | Stew, pie |
| Bison / buffalo | Bison | Steak, burger |
| Wild boar | Boar | Sausage, roast |
| Horse | Horsemeat (chevaline) | Steak (regional) |
| Snail | Escargot | — |
Why the meat has a different name
In English, many meats get a different word from the live animal — beef not cow, pork not pig, mutton not sheep. The usual explanation is history: after the Norman conquest of 1066, the French-speaking ruling class named the food on the table (from bœuf, porc, mouton) while the English-speaking farmers kept the older names for the animals in the field. Poultry and game often kept a single name — chicken, duck, rabbit — because the same social split didn't apply. For where each cut sits on the animal, see cuts of meat.
The pattern, and where it stops
The split is not random. It applies most consistently to the animals that were farmed by English-speaking peasants and eaten by a French-speaking aristocracy after 1066: cow becomes beef, pig becomes pork, sheep becomes mutton, calf becomes veal, deer becomes venison.
Where it does not apply is just as revealing. Chicken, duck, goose, rabbit and most fish kept a single word, largely because they were not the exclusive preserve of the aristocratic table — smallholders and peasants raised and ate poultry themselves, so no separate courtly vocabulary took hold. Goat is the same, which is why goat meat is simply goat, though it is sold as chevon or cabrito in some markets, borrowing French and Spanish respectively.
Age changes the name too
Several of these words distinguish the age of the animal rather than the species, which is a common source of confusion at a butcher's counter.
- Veal is from a calf; beef is from an adult animal.
- Lamb is under a year old; hogget is roughly one to two years; mutton is older still, with a stronger flavour and a texture that suits slow cooking.
- Pork covers the pig at most ages, with suckling pig the young exception.
- Venison covers deer broadly, though it historically meant the meat of any hunted game.
The age distinction matters in the kitchen as much as at the till, since older animals generally need longer, wetter cooking than young ones.
The same logic beyond the farmyard
The Norman-era pattern left a wider mark on English, which is why the language so often has a plain Anglo-Saxon word and a more formal French-derived one for the same thing — begin and commence, help and assist, freedom and liberty. The everyday word is usually the older English one.
For the cuts these animals are divided into, the cuts of meat guide maps each part of the carcass, and the meat temperatures chart covers the safe internal temperature for each.