preference if not in quantity. (The same
transformation can be traced in the French
word viande.) One sign of this preference
is Charles Carter’s 1732 Compleat City and
Country Cook, which devotes 50 pages to
meat dishes, 25 to poultry, and 40 to fish,
but only 25 to vegetables and a handful to
breads and pastries.
Abundant Meat in North America From the
beginning, Americans have enjoyed an
abundance of meat made possible by the size
and richness of the continent. In the 19th
century, as the country became urbanized and
more people lived away from the farm, meats
were barreled in salt to preserve them in
transit and in the shops; salt pork was as much
a staple food as bread (hence such phrases as
“scraping the bottom of the barrel” and “pork-
barrel politics”). In the 1870s a wider
distribution of fresh meat, especially beef,
was made possible by several advances,
including the growth of the cattle industry in
barry
(Barry)
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