American Meat Science Association

 1History and Language of International Meat

Cutting

Howard J. Swatland

international lectureship presentation

Patterns of meat cutting differ between most countries and

even within different regions of some countries, and must

be taken into account when we trade meat internationally.

Historical differences are compounded by differences in

spoken languages and ways of writing to produce a complex

technological matrix, but all based on the relatively

uniform anatomy of our meat animals. Cutting patterns

are a key part of meat consumption culture—a subject

which is fundamental to meat marketing, technology, and

science. This lecture explores how US meat cutting may

have evolved historically and linguistically, and gives an

overview of how patterns of meat cutting in the United

States relate to those used at export destinations.

INTRODUCTION

Receiving the AMSA International Lectureship Award was

a totally unexpected honor, and a great opportunity to

promote international meat consumption culture (Nam et

al., 2010; Swatland, 2010a) in the curriculum for meat science

students. Why? Because meat consumption culture

justifies our existence as meat scientists, as well as suggesting

creative ways for market development, both domestically

 and internationally. Our remote ancestors ate

 meat, and so do most of us now; meat has been around

 for the whole of our history—this is a dominant theme in

 advertising meat products and combating anti-meat propaganda.

 Patterns of meat cutting and terminology may

 differ from country to country, but in this great complexity

we can find traces of history and the development of

language—from the ancient world to a supermarket near

you. Consumption culture may be just a trendy name for

something we all take for granted, but once we adopt a

scholarly approach to a subject, we greatly improve our

understanding of what we know, and what we do not

know. What we know is how we cut meat in each of our

countries—but this knowledge is seldom shared between

countries; the sum of the knowledge exists, but is almost

inaccessible. What we do not know is how meat cutting

evolved in each country; as we see below, the scarcity of

documentation is our main problem.

ON THE SCARCITY OF DOCUMENTATION

There is abundant evidence of a well-developed meat industry

in ancient Egypt, involving both abattoir technology

and meat processing appropriate to the requirements of

meat preservation in a hot climate (Ikram, 2000). Scenes

such as those in Figure 1 are quite common in archeological

sites along the River Nile, but there is minimal variation

over very long periods of time, which suggests that

these scenes were symbolic and represented divine offerings

rather than everyday life (Smith, 2010). By the time

of ancient Greece and Rome, however, all the props of

the butcher’s trade had become established for the sale of

meat to the general public (Swatland, 2011b); although,

even here, the evidence may be suspicious. Scenes on

butchers’ grave markers are the best evidence, but one

famous bas-relief of a Roman butcher’s shop (which copyright

prevents me from showing) has been attributed to

both the Dresden Museum in Germany (Rixson, 2000)

and to the Roman Palace, Fishbourne, in England (Dunning,

1985). More symbolic copying, or just scholarly error?

This emphasizes that we are trying to understand the

history of meat cutting from just a few chance scenes that

have been preserved; unfortunately, we still have the same

problem today. Meat cutting in the United States is highly

standardized and fully documented, but the documentation

is not much older than AMSA itself: what was it like

in 1776? In Europe, traditional patterns of meat cutting

and the names of meat cuts are disappearing right now as

the EEC countries standardize their trading linkages like

interstate commerce in the United States.

ORIGIN OF US BEEF CUTS

From first principles of history and a shared language, one

would assume US beef cuts originated from Britain, but

US and British beef cuts are now radically different; thus,

we must study the differences and gather some proof of

our assumption. Let us ignore small anatomical differences

in how the cuts are made, and look only at the names

for the primal cuts (Table 1).

 Matching names for primal beef cuts in the United States compared with geographical sources in Britain: (A) England,

1816; (B) England, 1876; (C) England, 2000; (D) West of England; (E) Liverpool, (F) Northeast England; (G) Manchester;

(H) English Midlands; (I) London; and (J) Edinburgh; plus possible word origins

United States A B C D E F G H I J Cut match Archaic Possible origin

Sirloin 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 S urloine S urlonge (Old French)

Loin 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 L oyne L umbus (Latin)

Rib 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 10 R ibb R if (Norse)

Chuck 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 4 C hock Çoche (Old French)

Round 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 4 R ounde R otundus (Latin)

Flank 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 Flanc H lanke (Frankish)

Plate 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 P later P latus (Greek)

Brisket 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 10 Brusket Brjósk (Norse)

Shank 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 S ceanca S chenken (German)

Source match 5 3 2 4 4 5 3 4 5 4

Figure 2. Location of the sirloin in the United States and

Britain.

American Meat Science Association

 3 sirloin usually extends from the ilium to the last few ribs,

 and sometimes this sirloin is called a loin. In summary,

after the sirloin was exported from Britain and France, it

somehow changed position with the loin to give a zero

cut match in Table 1. Perhaps the naming of meat cuts

originated with animals lying on a kill floor, as in Figure

1, but changed once animals were hoisted off the floor, as

in Figure 2? The answer may be hidden in old farm-meats

books stored in your university library (note the challenge

to students in this audience). As the sirloin differs, so does

the rump (Figure 3).

LINGUISTIC SURVIVAL

We have just sampled some of the mysteries of transatlantic

communication; how about a different approach—

sampling the survival of an obscure name? In the early

years of the International Scientific Series, important books

which were published almost simultaneously in both Lon

don

and New York with a tremendous influence on international

science communication (Swatland, 2010b), the

third volume in the series was by Edward Smith (1819–

1874), a British physician with personal transatlantic connections

via his American wife. In his day he may not

 have been properly appreciated, but his final contribution

is remarkable; perhaps the first textbook of food science

in the English language based on biochemistry and physiology.

Smith (1876) was the first to consider the gaseous

 content and exposure of foods, thus establishing the sci entific

foundation of modern meat packaging, but he also

 included a meat cutting chart identifying a strange beef

cut—the spaud (Figure 4).

The spaud included the triceps brachii and the scapula.

The name was maintained through Middle English and

Old French, through spauld, espalde, and espaule, and

it links the modern French, épaule, to the original Latin,

spatulae, for the shoulder blades. Today in Italy, there are

cuts through the shoulder of the beef carcass with names

such as taglio di sottospalla (cut from the under-shoulder)

and sezione e muscolo di spalla (section of shoulder muscle);

and in Spain, the shoulder of a beef carcass is called

the espalda. There was a linguistic transformation from

scapula (shoulder blade) to spatula, via spatha (a doubleedged

broad sword). Espaldilla is Spanish for the scapula,

and a cut of this name may be found on a Mexican pork

carcass, involving the distal part of the forelimb. The pork

espaldilla y codillo includes the ventral neck and jowl;

and, in a Mexican lamb carcass, the espaldilla is a large

primal cut or a small shoulder roast, in veal as well as

lamb. The scapula was used as a digging tool in Neolithic

times (Tarrús, 2008), and you probably have a spatula in

your own kitchen. What a remarkable linguistic survival!

Although we have very little information on the historical

development of meat cuts in anatomical terms, we

can see from Table 1 that linguistic survival offers an indirect

source of information, but words can also fade away.

The English language has proved remarkably useful in

adapting to evolving technology and to the geographical

migrations of its speakers, but it lacks the advantage of

German in concatenating words; take a familiar example

– Fleischwirtschaft. English lacks words which might help

us communicate ideas relating to the meat industry, such

as a single term for the edible muscles of all animals. We

had to invent a new one—myosystems—just as we had

to invent muscle biology. Sadly, we have lost a real English

name that might have been very useful. The English

word laniary is derived from the Latin, macellarius, for

a butcher or slaughter house; thus, this whole lecture is

laniary in nature. An important date in the development

Figure 3. Location of the rump in the United States and

Britain.

HANDSAW VERSUS BANDSAW

Some of us learned meat cutting with a handsaw and a

knife, either in small shops or on the farm, and we know

the advantages of curvilinear cutting—moving slices of

meat from low-priced to high-priced cuts with elegant

curves! But on a large scale, running slabs of meat through

a bandsaw is the most efficient method. Thus, when we

look at the multitude of international meat cuts we see

curved lines for small-scale operations, and straight lines

for large-scale operations. In Argentina, for example,

there are 2 patterns of beef cutting based on the use of a

bandsaw versus a handsaw (Figure 5).

So who invented the bandsaw and laid the foundation

for the dominant patterns of meat cutting in the United

States? In 1813, Tabitha Babbit (1784–1853) invented the

circular saw in Massachusetts; bandsaws were developed

a little later, but were not successful until 1846 when

Anne Pauline Crépin in France invented a method to weld

the ends of the band securely (Duginske, 1989). About

this time, rolled spring-steel became available, and band

saws appeared in the meat industry. Thus, the mechanical

brilliance of 2 women has shaped the whole of US meat

cutting using bandsaws! But, is this the end of the story?

BONE-IN VERSUS BONELESS

If we look at the cut match for the round in Table 1, we

see quite a low score, 4, and there is a reason for this.

In a traditional British butcher’s shop, sides of beef were

quartered and laid on a block for cutting by hand. In the

hindquarter, the US round is more or less the same as the

British top piece (meat around the ischium, femur, and

tibia). But, as with the sirloin, what is meant by top? If a

whole British top piece or hip of beef is dropped onto a

cutting block, it is convenient to drop it with the lateral

surface downwards onto the block, thus leaving the medial

surface with the aitch bone (pubis) and chine bone

(vertebrae) exposed as landmarks for cutting. Hence, the

medial surface of the hip defines the English topside; quite

literally, it is on top, and the semimembranosus located