98 Fun Facts About Meat

Which meat was the most produced in the world in 2023, at about 34% of global output?

Chicken took the lead as its output more than doubled after 2000, while pork's share of the world total slid from 38% to just under 34%.

Which pigment gives red meat its colour and turns brown when it oxidises?

Myoglobin stores oxygen in muscle, and its iron browns as it oxidises; nitrite locks that iron into a pink form, which is why cured ham and bacon stay rosy when cooked.

What is the name of the process, involving amino acids and sugars, that browns a seared steak?

The Maillard reaction, first described by French chemist Louis Camille Maillard in 1912, only takes off at around 140°C, which is why so many recipes insist on a properly hot oven or pan.

What is 'marbling' in a cut of beef?

Fat deposited near the muscle fibres is prized for flavour and juiciness, yet a USDA study found that marbling accounts for only about 5% of how good a steak tastes.

Which of the four Wagyu breeds is actually responsible for the famous rich marbling?

Japanese Black makes up more than 90% of Japan's Wagyu, yet until the Meiji era of the late 1800s such cattle were kept only as draught animals, never for their meat.

In which Japanese prefecture must cattle be raised to qualify as Kobe beef?

Hyōgo is the prefecture around the city of Kobe, and only Tajima-strain cattle born and raised there qualify; none was exported until 2012, so earlier 'Kobe beef' abroad was not the real thing.

Filet mignon and chateaubriand both come from which cut of beef?

Tenderloin's thick centre gives chateaubriand, a dish said to be named after the French writer of that name, whose chef Montmireil is credited with creating it.

How is dry-aged beef produced?

Hung or racked to dry for several weeks in a chilled room, the beef loses water, which concentrates its flavour, while its own enzymes soften it.

Which cut of the pig is 'streaky' bacon made from?

The belly has long alternating layers of fat and muscle, which give the rashers their streaks; this side bacon is the most common kind in the United States.

Hams that pass inspection as genuine Prosciutto di Parma are branded with which symbol?

A five-pointed crown is branded on only at the end of ageing, as the last of several marks, and the rules allow just two ingredients in the ham: pork and salt.

The finest jamón ibérico, labelled 'de bellota', comes from pigs fattened on what?

Acorns: bellota is the Spanish word for them, and each autumn the black Iberian pigs are turned loose in oak pastures called dehesas to gorge on the fallen crop.

Bresaola, air-dried beef from the Alpine valley of Valtellina, comes from which region of Italy?

Lombardy's Valtellina runs up against the Swiss border; there lean beef is salted and hung for two or three months until it is hard and a dark, almost purple red.

What must mortadella contain at least 15% of, by rule?

Cubes of pork fat, cut mainly from the hard fat of the pig's neck, must make up at least 15% of the sausage, whereas the pistachios many people expect are an optional modern addition.

Pastrami originated in the Jewish community of which country?

Romania's Jewish cooks cured goose as pastramă; emigrants to New York switched to beef, which was cheaper there than goose, creating the deli classic.

Where does the word 'corned' in corned beef come from?

Large grains ('corns') of rock salt were rubbed into the beef to cure it; corned beef and cabbage is an Irish-American dish, born when immigrants swapped their usual bacon for cheap American beef.

'Jerky' reached English via Spanish from which South American language?

Quechua ch'arki, dried meat, passed into Spanish as charqui, and English speakers reshaped that into 'jerky', along with the verb 'jerk' for curing meat in strips.

How does biltong differ from jerky in its production?

It is air-dried rather than heated: the strips are cured with vinegar, salt and spices and hung to dry, whereas jerky is dried with heat and is often smoked.

What is the traditional casing for haggis?

A sheep's stomach traditionally holds the minced heart, liver and lungs with oatmeal and suet; because the US has banned lungs in food since 1971, real haggis cannot be sold there.

What is black pudding made from?

Pork blood, fat and cereal, usually oatmeal, fill the sausage; each September in Ramsbottom, contestants hurl black puddings at Yorkshire puddings stacked on a 20-foot plinth.

By French law, foie gras must be the liver of a duck or goose fattened by what method?

Gavage (force feeding) swells the liver to around ten times its normal size, which is why several countries and California have outlawed producing foie gras.

What is Spam made from?

Pork and ham go into every can: Hormel created Spam partly to shift pork shoulder, a cut that was selling badly.

Whose sketch probably named spam email?

Monty Python's 1970 sketch drowns out all conversation with a chorus of 'Spam', and early internet users are thought to have borrowed the word for messages that flooded their forums.

The word 'frankfurter' comes from Frankfurt, but 'wiener' refers to which city?

Vienna is Wien in German, so a wiener is simply a 'Viennese' sausage; in Austria itself, though, the same sausage is usually called a Frankfurter.

Which German city traces its bratwurst recipe to a council ruling of 1313?

Nuremberg's council is said to have laid down the recipe in 1313, and under EU protection the city's small Rostbratwurst may be made only inside the city limits.

How is a döner kebab cooked?

Döner meat is stacked on a vertical rotisserie and shaved off as the outside cooks, a 19th-century Ottoman technique that also gave rise to shawarma, gyros and Mexican al pastor.

What is a turducken?

A turkey stuffed with duck and chicken, each bird boned first, went national after commentator John Madden championed it during NFL Thanksgiving broadcasts.

What are Rocky Mountain oysters?

Bull testicles, usually taken from calves at branding time, are a by-product of castrating ranch cattle; they are peeled, rolled in flour and fried.

Which glands are served as 'sweetbreads'?

Thymus or pancreas, taken from calves or lambs: the thymus shrinks away as an animal matures, so this 'throat' sweetbread comes from young animals.

What is veal?

Meat from calves comes mostly from young males of dairy breeds, which will never give milk and are not needed for breeding.

What is meat from a sheep in its second year called?

Hogget is meat from a sheep in its second year, roughly 12 to 24 months old; lamb is under a year and mutton comes from older sheep, its name from the French mouton.

Which lean Australian meat is never farmed, coming only from wild animals shot under government quotas?

Kangaroo is taken from the wild by licensed shooters and is under 3% fat; in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland it could be sold only as pet food until 1993.

Which country was the world's largest beef exporter as of 2020?

Brazil is the world's top beef exporter, and the trade has a cost: cattle ranching has been identified as the primary cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

Roughly what did the first lab-grown beef burger, tasted in 2013, cost?

About $300,000 of Google co-founder Sergey Brin's money paid for Mark Post's team to grow strips of muscle from a cow's cells; one taster called the burger close to meat but not that juicy.

In which country was cell-cultured meat first sold commercially, in December 2020?

The restaurant was 1880 in Singapore.

Which Cree-named mix of dried meat and fat fed the fur trade?

Pemmican mattered so much to the fur trade that an 1814 ban on exporting it from the Red River Colony set off the armed clashes known as the Pemmican War.

Which two religions most notably prohibit eating pork?

Islam and Judaism both forbid pork, and Leviticus spells out the reason: the pig has a divided hoof but does not chew the cud, so it is unclean.

What is the traditional Scottish accompaniment to haggis?

Neeps and tatties, mashed swede and potato, flank the haggis at a Burns supper, where the host recites Burns's 'Address to a Haggis' and slices it open with a ceremonial knife.

What is salami, technically?

Fermented and air-dried meat, usually pork: bacteria turn sugar into lactic acid, and that sourness, with the salt and slow drying, preserves the raw meat without any cooking.

During which period did meatloaf become a way for American families to stretch their food budgets?

The Great Depression made meatloaf a staple because bread, crackers or oats let a little meat feed more mouths, and by then home meat grinders were common.

Roast suckling pig, cochinillo asado, is a speciality of which Spanish city?

Segovia's innkeeper Cándido López made the dish famous in the mid-20th century by cutting each roast piglet at the table with the edge of a plate instead of a knife.

Which wild ancestor of domestic cattle was hunted by Neanderthals and painted at Lascaux?

The aurochs died out in 1627, when the last one perished in a Polish forest; in the 1920s the German brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck tried to breed it back, producing today's Heck cattle.

Canadian-style back bacon is a lean cut from the eye of which part of the pig?

The loin gives this bacon its lean, ham-like eye of meat, but 'Canadian bacon' is an American name: in Canada it is simply back bacon, and 'bacon' alone means the fatty side cut.

Where does beef rank among the world's most widely consumed meats?

Beef ranks third by volume, behind poultry and pork, making up roughly a fifth of global meat production — around 76 million tonnes a year in the early 2020s.

By what other name is Scotland's square breakfast banger known?

Lorne sausage has no casing: the seasoned mince is pressed into a block and sliced, which is why each piece comes out square and sits flat in a breakfast roll.

What is the Italian name for the cured pork jowl traditionally used in carbonara?

Guanciale is fattier than pancetta, and when it is fried that fat melts away into the pan, which is why cooks in Rome's home region build their pasta sauces on it.

Despite its name, Canadian peameal bacon from Ontario is rolled in what coating today?

Fine cornmeal replaced the ground dried yellow peas that Toronto packer William Davies is said to have used to help the cured pork keep, yet the old 'peameal' name stuck.

Ancient Italy's most famous sausage, lucanica, came from Lucania, which is now which region?

Ancient Lucania corresponds to modern Basilicata in southern Italy, which briefly re-took the name Lucania from 1932 to 1947; lucanica survives as Lucanica di Picerno and Greek loukaniko.

Which Aristophanes comedy is about a sausage vendor who is elected leader?

In Aristophanes' The Knights (424 BC) the sausage-seller Agoracritus out-demagogues the Paphlagonian, a stand-in for Cleon, to win the favour of Demos, the personified Athenian people.

Which US symbol is said to be named after a meatpacker who supplied rations in the War of 1812?

Uncle Sam is traced to Samuel Wilson, whose ration packages stamped 'U.S.' were jokingly said to stand for his nickname, though the true origin of the character is obscure.

Buffalo wings have nothing to do with bison, because they are named after a city in which US state?

New York is home to Buffalo, where one account has Teressa Bellissimo first preparing the sauced wings at the Anchor Bar in 1964.

Which pop star collected a 2010 MTV Video Music Award in a dress made of raw flank steak?

Lady Gaga's meat dress was later preserved by taxidermists as a type of jerky and put on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Cuy, a meat raised by many households in the Andean highlands, comes from which small animal?

Guinea pig was domesticated for food in the Andes as early as 5000 BC, and became an exotic pet in Europe only after traders carried it there in the 1500s.

Which medieval event led English to adopt the French words beef and pork beside cow and pig?

The Norman Conquest opened centuries of French influence on English, though the tidy tale of nobles eating what Saxon peasants raised was popularised much later by Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.

Tacos al pastor grew out of the shawarma brought to Mexico by immigrants from which country?

Lebanon sent a wave of migrants to Mexico around the turn of the twentieth century, and their Mexican-born children opened restaurants that reworked the spit-roasted dish.

In which film does a small-time Philadelphia boxer train by using sides of beef as punching bags?

Rocky drew a complaint from Joe Frazier, who claimed the carcass-punching scenes were taken without credit from his own real-life training.

The Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest is held on Coney Island each year on which holiday?

Fourth of July crowds have gathered at the original Nathan's stand most years since about 1972, though several early contests fell on other summer holidays.

Which Upton Sinclair novel about American meatpacking plants spurred the Meat Inspection Act?

The Jungle was meant to expose the exploitation of factory workers, but readers fixed on food safety instead, and Sinclair complained that the public had missed his point.

Which spicy American variety of salami is one of the most popular pizza toppings in US pizzerias?

Pepperoni is soft, slightly smoky and bright red before cooking, and slices in a natural casing curl into crisp little cups in the heat of a pizza oven.

Which dish of finely chopped raw beef is commonly served topped with a raw egg yolk?

Steak tartare is short for steak à la tartare, meaning served with tartar sauce; the tale of Tatar horsemen tenderising meat under their saddles is a caricature.

Which dish of thinly sliced raw beef, invented at Harry's Bar in Venice, is named after a painter?

Carpaccio was created in 1950 for a countess whose doctors had told her to eat raw meat, and its colours recalled the Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio.

Which baked dish wraps fillet steak and duxelles, a chopped mushroom paste, inside puff pastry?

Beef Wellington is presumably named after the first Duke of Wellington, yet no link between the general and the dish has ever been found.

Venison, from the Latin for 'to hunt', once covered any game but now means the meat of which animal?

Deer are the animals the word settled on, though venison once took in hares, rabbits and wild boar as well.

Cabrito, a roast speciality of Monterrey in Mexico, and chevon both name the meat of which animal?

Goat was given the trade name chevon in 1922 and the US Department of Agriculture adopted it in 1928, but the term never caught on with American shoppers.

Purists insist that a shepherd's pie, unlike a cottage pie, must be made with which minced meat?

Lamb suits the shepherd in the name, yet the two terms were used interchangeably from the start, and Jane Grigson's 1974 shepherd's pie recipe used beef.

Kielbasa, a U-shaped smoked sausage in America, is simply the word for sausage in which language?

Polish cooks make kiełbasa in dozens of varieties, smoked or fresh, so in its homeland the word covers far more than the single horseshoe link Americans know.

Köttbullar, meatballs served with gravy and lingonberry jam, are a classic dish of which country?

Sweden calls its meatballs köttbullar, literally 'meat buns', and serves them with boiled or mashed potatoes and sometimes pickled cucumber.

Which Korean dish of thin, marinated slices of grilled beef has a name meaning 'fire meat'?

Bulgogi is believed to date from the Goguryeo era, when the beef was grilled on skewers under the older name maekjeok.

Satay, skewered grilled meat served with peanut sauce, is a national dish of which country?

Indonesia shares that claim with Malaysia, and the sauce itself only became possible after peanuts crossed the Pacific from the Americas on the Manila galleons.

Which paprika-seasoned stew, first cooked by cattle herdsmen, is a national dish of Hungary?

Goulash takes its name from gulyás, the Hungarian word for the herdsmen themselves, and early versions had no paprika, which reached Europe only in the 16th century.

Beef Stroganoff, sautéed beef in a sour-cream sauce, is named after a noble family of which country?

Russia's Stroganov family gave the dish its name, though nobody is sure whether it honours the diplomat Pavel Stroganov or the politician Alexander Stroganov.

The Goan curry vindaloo descends from a garlic and vinegar meat dish of which colonial power?

Portugal made Goa the capital of its State of India in 1530, and the name vindaloo is a worn-down form of the dish carne de vinha d'alhos.

Which South African dish bakes spiced minced meat beneath a savoury topping of egg and milk?

Bobotie was adopted by the Cape Malay community, though the writer and gourmet Louis Leipoldt traced the recipe back to seventeenth-century Europe.

Herta Heuwer invented currywurst with curry powder from British soldiers in which German city?

Berlin was a devastated city in 1949 when Heuwer began selling the snack at a stand in Charlottenburg, where it caught on with the construction workers rebuilding it.

Which smoked pork sausage of French origin is most associated with Louisiana Cajun cooking?

Andouille made LaPlace, Louisiana, the self-styled Andouille Capital of the World, while the original from Brittany and Normandy is a quite different sausage built on offal.

Which red, spicy sausage of Maghrebi cuisine gets its colour and heat from chili or harissa?

Merguez became popular in France in the 1960s and 1970s, when Algerian immigrants and the pieds-noirs opened small shops and restaurants that served it.

Which poet's birthday on 25 January is marked with suppers of haggis, whisky and recited verse?

Robert Burns praised the dish in his Address to a Haggis, and a Greenock club held its first birthday supper in 1802 four days late because its members had his birthday wrong.

Which nutrient, lacking in plant foods, makes meat-free vegan diets a risk for deficiency?

Vitamin B12 is required by animals but not by plants, which rely on other enzyme pathways, so vegans depend on supplements or fortified foods for it.

Which thick-cut beef fillet dish is named after a French author who was ambassador to Britain?

Chateaubriand is credited to Montmireil, personal chef to the writer François-René de Chateaubriand, who is said to have created it in 1822.

Which steak looks like a T-bone but is cut further back and carries a much larger piece of fillet?

Porterhouse steaks must carry a fillet at least 1.25 inches wide under US government purchasing rules, against only half an inch for a T-bone.

Which cut from the breast or lower chest of beef cattle is famously smoked for Texas barbecue?

Brisket starts out tough because cattle have no collar bones, so these chest muscles carry about 60% of a standing animal's weight and need long cooking to soften.

The pork cut called Boston butt, a favourite for pulled pork, comes from which part of the pig?

Shoulder cuts are said to have been packed by colonial New England butchers into barrels known as butts, the usual account of how a joint from the front of the animal got its misleading name.

Which showy steak is a ribeye left on a rib bone at least five inches long and French-trimmed?

Tomahawk steaks take their name from the Native American axe, which the long bare bone and its head of meat are thought to resemble.

Fajitas were originally strips of which beef cut, handed to Texas ranch hands at cattle roundups?

Skirt steak was one of the scrap cuts given to vaqueros when cattle were slaughtered, and fajita is a diminutive of the Spanish faja, a strip or belt.

Which top grade does the US Department of Agriculture award to beef with the most marbling?

Prime sits above Choice and Select on an eight-grade scale that runs all the way down to Utility, Cutter and Canner.

Chitterlings, or chitlins, a traditional food of the American South, are which part of a pig?

Intestines are what the archaic English word chitterlings means, and the dish spread from the South across the United States with the Black Migration.

Which French word names the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meats such as terrines and pâtés?

Charcuterie comes from the French chair, 'flesh', and cuit, 'cooked', and the craft also takes in galantines, ballotines and confit.

Which British dish bakes sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with onion gravy?

Toad in the hole may be named for the way toads wait in their burrows with their heads poking out, just as the sausages peep through the batter.

Which Midwestern city's Union Stock Yards made it the centre of American meatpacking for decades?

Chicago's yards were laid out on marshland bought by a group of railroad companies, opened on Christmas Day 1865 and ran for 106 years before closing in 1971.

Which Ohio city was nicknamed 'Porkopolis' for its pork processing trade before the Civil War?

Cincinnati was the seat of the United States meat-packing industry in the early 1860s, and Porkopolis sits beside its grander nickname, the Queen City of the West.

Which brand, founded in Wichita, Kansas, is credited as the first fast-food hamburger chain?

White Castle sold its small square burgers for five cents each, and its founders set out to convince a wary public that ground beef could be clean.

Which salty British beef-extract paste was developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston?

Bovril began as Johnston's Fluid Beef, created after Napoleon III ordered a million cans of beef to feed his troops in the Franco-Prussian War.

The British tinned-meat brand Fray Bentos is named after a port in which South American country?

Uruguay housed the factory that began tinning corned beef in 1873, and everything sold under the Fray Bentos name was packed there until the 1960s.

French diners traditionally cover their heads with a napkin to eat which tiny roasted songbird?

Ortolan was part of former president François Mitterrand's last New Year's Eve meal in 1995, and the purpose of the napkin is debated.

Which astronaut carried a contraband corned beef sandwich into orbit aboard Gemini 3?

John Young and his commander each took a few bites before the sandwich was stowed, and both were reprimanded because its crumbs could have wrecked the electronics.

'Nduja, a fiery, spreadable pork sausage made with chillies, comes from which region of Italy?

Calabria's area around Spilinga is the home of 'nduja, which is made from meat trimmings, offal and fatback.

Which type of misfolded protein is thought to cause BSE, also known as mad cow disease?

Prion infection is believed to have reached cattle through meat-and-bone meal made from infected remains, and in humans it is linked to variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.

The Dunmow Flitch Trials in Essex award a side of bacon to whom?

A contented married couple must persuade a mock jury of six maidens and six bachelors that they have not regretted their marriage, in trials staged every leap year.

Bromelain, an enzyme extract used as a meat tenderizer, comes from the stems of which fruit?

Pineapple loses its tenderizing power once it is cooked or canned, because the heat-sensitive enzymes are destroyed in the process.