MDMD(6): Eating at the Vroom house.

[Monte Davis]

> But back to the text.  When we talk about food, there's a minor tabu at
> work: from the moment an animal is cut op into pieces, we quite often
> change the way we describe it.  In English, usually, the descriptions
> change from anglo-saxon words into (originally) French: you never eat a
> 'cow-steak' or 'roasted cow', no, it becomes 'beef'.

Sheep->mutton, deer->venison, etc. For many English and American readers,
the _locus classicus_ for this is a pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue in the
opening chapter of Walter Scott's _Ivanhoe_:

***
http://www.underthesun.cc/Classics/Scott/ivanhoe/ivanhoe3.html

"Why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?"
demanded Wamba.

"Swine, fool, swine," said the herd, "every fool knows that."

"And swine is good Saxon," said the Jester; "but how call you the sow when
she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a
traitor?"

"Pork," answered the swine-herd.

"I am very glad every fool knows that too," said Wamba, "and pork, I think,
is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of
a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is
called pork, when she is carried to the Castle-hall to feast among the
nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?"