slaughtering them young to obtain tender,
mild, fatty flesh. This method also goes back
to prehistory, when it was applied to pigs and
to the otherwise useless male offspring of
hens and dairy animals. With the rise of cities,
meat animals were confined and fattened
exclusively for the urban elite who could
afford such a luxury, an art represented in
Egyptian murals and described by Roman
writers.
For many centuries, rural and urban meats
coexisted, and inspired the development of
two distinct styles of meat preparation:
roasting for the tender, fattened meats of the
wealthy, and stewing for the tough, lean meats
of the peasants.
The Rural Style Disappears With the
Industrial Revolution, draft animals were
slowly replaced by machines. City
populations and the middle class grew, and
along with them the demand for meat, which