getting younger and leaner, and therefore
more prone to end up dry and flavorless.
Traditional cooking methods don’t always
serve modern meat well, and cooks need to
know how to adjust them.
Our species eats just about everything that
moves, from insects and snails to horses and
whales. This chapter gives details for only the
more common meats of the developed world,
but the general principles apply to the flesh of
all animals. Though fish and shellfish are as
much flesh foods as meat and poultry, their
flesh is unusual in several ways. They are the
subject of chapter 4.
Eating Animals
By the word meat we mean the body tissues of
animals that can be eaten as food, anything
from frog legs to calf brains. We usually
make a distinction between meats proper,
muscle tissue whose function is to move some