The Cuts — Butchery Vocabulary by Animal
The butchery vocabulary — entrecôte, escalope, saddle, darne — where each name came from, what the cut is, and which animals it is taken from.
Tournedos
Cuts & Portions, 19th century
Taken from: beef
Literally "turn-back", from *tourner*, "to turn", and *dos*, "back". It is recorded in 1594 as *torne-dos* for the act of turning one's back, and by 1611 for a coward. The kitchen sense arrives much later, first written down in 1864. There is also an eighteenth-century fishmongers' usage — selling *à tournedos* — for spoiled fish laid out on the stall the opposite way round from usual. In the 1907 the tournedos is a fixed unit and everything around it varies: 104 entries running alphabetically from Tournedos à l'Algérienne through Baltimore, Béarnaise, Belle-Hélène and Bercy, told apart by garnish and sauce rather than by the cut, which never changes from one to the next.
Where the name came from is genuinely disputed, and the accounts do not agree. The attestations themselves are plain enough: *torne-dos* for turning one's back in 1594, "coward" in 1611, and the kitchen sense only in 1864, with an eighteenth-century fishmongers' usage — spoiled fish laid out the opposite way round from usual — sitting off to one side. The explanations are another matter. One holds that the name was given to fillet ends left some days in the store-room, the term reaching a restaurant menu by inadvertence and being taken up by a public that did not know what it meant. Another, offered some seventy years earlier, has nothing in common with it: the word applies to small collops of meat that are done on one side almost as soon as the cook turns his back. No two of these corroborate one another, and none reckons with the rest.
Cockscombs
Cuts & Portions, France, Classical French cuisine
Taken from: poultry
"Cockscomb" is attested c. 1400 in the sense "comb or crest of a cock," formed from the possessive of cock plus comb; the culinary crêtes de coq are the rooster's fleshy crest used as a garnish. In classic French cookery cockscombs (crêtes de coq) served both as a garnish and within preparations, where they would be minced and combined with a sauce that could then be used in various dishes.
Cutlet
Cuts & Portions, 14th century
Taken from: veal, lamb, pork
A little rib. *Côtelette* is the diminutive of *côte*, itself straight from Latin *costa*, the rib — anatomical in French from around 1160. The diminutive is attested around 1393, in *Le Ménagier de Paris*. In the 1907 *côtelette* names a SHAPE rather than a cut, and Escoffier applies it to three quite different things. It is a real rib chop. It is flesh trimmed to the shape: for Côtelettes de Saumon à la d'Artois a salmon fillet is cut into escalopes of 100 to 110 grammes, then *parer ces escalopes en forme de côtelettes*, trim these escalopes into the form of cutlets. And it is a bound mixture set in a mould — Côtelettes d'Œufs à la Dauphine fill *de petits moules ayant la forme d'une côtelette*, little moulds having the shape of a cutlet, lined thinly with puff-pastry trimmings; Côtelettes de Saumon A are a salpicon of cooked salmon, mushrooms, shrimp tails and truffle bound with reduced Béchamel and three yolks; Côtelettes de Homard Arkangel are caviar and diced lobster bound with a lobster mousse mixture and moulded. 81 staged entries carry the form.
Filet mignon
Cuts & Portions, recorded as a butchery term by 1833
Taken from: beef, pork
A dainty little fillet. *Filet* is the fillet or tenderloin, and *mignon* means "dainty", "delicate", "small" — a word in French since the late twelfth century. Paired together as a butcher's term, *filet mignon* is recorded in 1833. The filet mignon is a small cut taken from the slender, tapering tip of the tenderloin. In beef it is the narrow end of the psoas (the filet) trimmed into small portions; the same name is applied to the pork tenderloin (filet mignon de porc). Its "dainty fillet" name marks it as a small, tender portion.
Foie gras
Cuts & Portions, Ancient Egypt; later Alsace/France, Ancient Egypt (c. 2500 BC)
Taken from: goose, duck
*Foie gras* means, literally, "fat liver" — from *foie*, "liver," and *gras*, "fat." *Foie* itself goes back to the Late Latin *ficatum*, "fattened liver," the liver of an animal raised on figs; the word was built on *ficus*, "fig," in imitation of the Greek *sukoton*. The form *ficato* turns up in the eighth-century Glosses of Reichenau, and English borrows *foie gras* by 1818. Fattening waterfowl by overfeeding them is a very old practice: the ancient Egyptians were force-feeding birds as early as 2500 BC, and the habit spread around the Mediterranean. It was the Romans, though, who first treated the fattened liver as a food in its own right, naming it *iecur ficatum* after the figs they used to enlarge it.
Viziga
Cuts & Portions, Russia (Caspian & river sturgeon fisheries), Imperial Russian cuisine (to early 20th c.)
Taken from: sturgeon
An English culinary borrowing (also vesiga) from Russian, naming the dried, gelatinous spinal cord of the sturgeon; the deeper origin of the word isn't firmly documented. Dried, the gelatinous cord from along the sturgeon's spine becomes viziga — a whitish, gelatinous ribbon, and a prized ingredient of well-to-do Russian cooking. It was the classic filling for the grand fish pie kulebyaka (coulibiac), and is rarely found today.
Amourettes
Cuts & Portions, France, culinary sense first attested 1771
Taken from: veal, mutton, beef
In French cookery "amourettes" (plural of amourette, a diminutive of amour, "love") is the term for the marrow taken from the loin and spine of veal, mutton or beef; the culinary sense is recorded in 1771 in the Dictionnaire de Trévoux. A classic white offal of French charcuterie and haute cuisine, amourettes are the spinal marrow of beef, veal or mutton, cut up and served as a delicate garnish for bouchées, timbales, croûtes, salads and vol-au-vent.
Brains
Cuts & Portions, global; French haute cuisine (cervelles), antiquity to present
Taken from: veal
"Brain" descends from Old English brægen "brain," from Proto-Germanic *bragnan, with cognates such as Old Frisian and Dutch brein; the French culinary term is cervelle. Animal brains have a long place in cookery across many cultures; in French cuisine they appear in dishes such as cervelle de veau and tête de veau.
Chop
Cuts & Portions, 12th century
Taken from: lamb, pork, veal
Two different words meet on this row. The recipes are *Côtes de veau* — French *côte*, the rib, taken straight from Latin *costa* and attested anatomically in French from around 1160, whose diminutive *côtelette* is what English calls a cutlet. The English word at the head of this entry descends from neither. Garrett's *Encyclopaedia of Practical Cookery* is explicit: there is no word in any other language that can be called the direct representative of "chop", it cannot be confounded with the foreign *côtelette*, "which is equivalent to our cutlet", and it means just exactly what it says — a piece chopped off. Custom, he adds, confines it to the loin and the chump. All 39 staged entries are *Côtes de veau*, and Escoffier's clearest remark about them is about trimming rather than cooking. Of the Côte de Veau à la Bouchère he writes that the term indicates no special preparation but the way the chop is trimmed: left in its natural state, that is to say without stripping the end of the bone as is ordinarily done. It is generally grilled, and accompanied by a garnish suiting veal chops.
Coral
Cuts & Portions, France / European coasts, word attested before 1150; culinary sense established in classical French cuisine
Taken from: shellfish
French corail descends from Late Latin corallum (Classical corallium), attested in French before 1150 in the Lapidaire de Marbode. In cookery the word is extended to the roe of shellfish - a culinary term for the ovary or roe - named for its coral-red colour when cooked. The "coral" of a lobster or scallop is its roe, soft and reddish-orange, which turns a brilliant coral-red when cooked; in classical French cookery it is worked into butters, sauces, and soups to finish and colour shellfish dishes.
Darne
Cuts & Portions, Attested in French from the early 13th century (1216–18)
Taken from: salmon, fish
Darne comes from the Breton word *darn*, meaning "piece" or "fragment" — an apt name for a thick slice cut straight across a large fish. It entered French cooking early: the phrase *darne de saumon*, "a slice of salmon," turns up in writing by the early thirteenth century. A darne is a crosswise slice of a large round fish — a fish steak, cut thick and left on the bone so it holds its shape as it cooks. Salmon is the classic choice, though the cut suits any large round fish.
Gigot
Cuts & Portions, Attested 15th century
Taken from: lamb, mutton
Gigot is the French word for a leg of lamb or mutton, and the name is a quiet joke about its shape: it comes from the Old French *gigue*, a fiddle, the cut being named for the way it tapers like the body of the instrument. It turns up in that culinary sense as early as the fifteenth century, in Taillevent's *Viandier*. A gigot is the whole hind leg of a lamb or sheep, taken off at the hip and roasted on the bone — the largest single cut the animal gives, and the one built for a table of people. *Gigot d'agneau* is the leg of a young lamb; *gigot de mouton*, the older and stronger-flavored mutton version.
Loin
Cuts & Portions, Middle English, first attested early 14th c.
Taken from: beef, veal, lamb, pork
From Old French "loigne" ("hip, haunch, lumbar region"), from Vulgar Latin "*lumbea", ultimately from Latin "lumbus" ("loin"), tracing to a PIE root for the loin. Notably, etymonline records that the word's earliest English use, early 14c., already carries the butchery sense: "side of the body of an animal used for food," with the human-anatomy sense following late in the same century. The loin is taken from the animal's back, along the spine behind the ribs and forward of the hindquarter; it is generally among the more tender regions because those muscles do relatively little weight-bearing work. In the kitchen the term covers a family of prime cuts across beef, veal, lamb, and pork.
Marrow
Cuts & Portions, Old French term; the food used worldwide and central to classic European cuisine, French word attested from the early 12th century; bone marrow eaten since prehistory
Taken from: beef, veal
French moelle "bone marrow" is attested by 1121-34 (Philippe de Thaon, Bestiaire) in the sense of the soft, fatty substance inside bones, and derives (by metathesis) from Latin medulla "marrow of bone or plant." Bone marrow has been eaten around the world and throughout history for its flavor and nutrition — early humans smashed bones to reach it — and it remains a building block of classic European cooking, part of dishes such as the French pot-au-feu and Italian ossobuco.
Noisette
Cuts & Portions, culinary sense recorded by the early 19th century (1822)
Taken from: lamb, veal
*Noisette* is *noix*, "nut," with the little-ending *-ette* — a "little hazelnut," named for its small round shape. The word is recorded from the 1220s as the fruit of the hazel; the kitchen sense first appears in 1822, in Carême's *noisette de veau*, "veal noisette." A noisette is a small, round, boneless medallion of meat, usually trimmed from the loin or the rib. It is most familiar as a cut of lamb, though the earliest kitchen record of the word is Carême's veal noisette; either way, the "little hazelnut" name catches the small, coin-shaped form.
Rack
Cuts & Portions, The butchery sense of the word is attested from the 1560s (etymonline)
Taken from: lamb, veal, pork
For the meat sense etymonline records: "cut of animal meat and bones," usually involving the neck and forepart of the spine, 1560s, of unknown origin; perhaps from some resemblance to the framework sense — the earlier "grating or open frame with bars or pegs" (c. 1300, possibly from Middle Dutch rec "framework"). Compare rack-bone "vertebrae" (1610s). A rack is the rib section of the forequarter — the set of joined rib bones with the eye of loin muscle attached, taken from roughly the neck end toward the loin. This matches etymonline's gloss of the cut as involving "the neck and forepart of the spine," and the rib bones give the joint its characteristic frame-of-bones appearance.
Saddle
Cuts & Portions, English culinary usage documented by the mid-19th century; the word itself is Old English
Taken from: veal, lamb, mutton, game
The word descends from Old English sadol — etymonline gives "Middle English sadel, from Old English sadol 'contrivance secured to the back of a horse, etc., as a seat for a rider,' from Proto-Germanic *sathulaz." The butchery sense (the undivided two loins joined across the backbone) appears to be a later transfer from the riding-saddle shape; etymonline records no culinary attestation date, and Wiktionary's earliest illustrative quotation for the meat sense is from 1847, so the exact first use is not firmly documented. A saddle is generally the unsplit back of the animal — both loins left joined across the backbone rather than cut into two sides — taken from the region roughly between the last rib and the hips. Wiktionary defines it as "A cut of meat that includes both loins and part of the backbone," and the joined form is prized as a large, symmetrical roasting joint of tender back muscle.
Soft roe
Cuts & Portions, France / Europe, Medieval; French term attested c. 1300
Taken from: fish
The French culinary term laitance derives from lait "milk" (with the suffix -ance) and is attested from around 1300 as "leitenches de carpes" in Taillevent's Le Viandier; in English it is called soft roe, the milt of male fish. Soft roe (milt) is the seminal fluid and reproductive glands of male fish, eaten across several cuisines: in Britain cod soft roes are traditionally fried in butter and spread on toast, in Sicily tuna milt (lattume) tops pasta, and in Japan it is eaten as shirako.
Steak
Cuts & Portions, recorded in English from the mid-15th century
Taken from: beef
Per the Online Etymology Dictionary: "mid-15c., steke, 'thick slice of meat cut for roasting,' probably from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse steik," ultimately tied to the notion of meat "stuck" on a spit for roasting. The word is English, borrowed from Old Norse, rather than of French origin. A steak is a comparatively thick slice of meat cut for grilling or roasting, most familiarly from beef. The English word descends from Old Norse steik, reflecting the early practice of roasting meat fixed on a spit.
Tail fat
Cuts & Portions, Middle East / Central Asia, Ancient onward
Taken from: sheep
The fat of the sheep's broad tail. In Hebrew it is alyah — the Alyá of the sacrificial offerings — while in Arabic it is layeh; in Persian it is dumba. Rendered from the broad tail of fat-tailed sheep, this rich, strongly flavoured fat has been a cooking and enriching fat across the Middle East and Central Asia since antiquity — its offering is described in Exodus and Leviticus. It remains revered in Uzbek cooking, where it goes into dishes like palov and laghman.
Aiguillette
Cuts & Portions, culinary strip sense attested from the 14th century (1392); fowl sense by 1718
Taken from: duck, beef
Aiguillette is a little needle — *aiguille*, "needle", with the diminutive ending *-ette* — a name that catches the narrow, tapering shape of the strip. The sense of a thin sliver of flesh goes back to 1392, in a reckoning of *aiguillettes* of mutton and deer; by the early eighteenth century the word had settled above all on fowl, in the turn of phrase for cutting a duck or a waterfowl *par aiguillettes*, "into aiguillettes". An aiguillette is a long, thin strip of meat. On poultry — duck especially — the aiguillettes are the two slender fillets running the length of each side of the breastbone; in beef butchery the term also names an elongated, tapering cut taken from the rump (aiguillette de rumsteck, aiguillette baronne), a cut French cooks favour for braising. The name's "little needle" sense reflects that narrow, pointed form.
Breast
Cuts & Portions, Old English (word); butchery sense a later specialization
Taken from: veal, lamb
From Old English "breost" ("mammary gland of a woman, bosom; the thorax or chest"), from Proto-Germanic "*brust-/*breust-" and a PIE root meaning "to swell, sprout." The origin is anatomical; the culinary sense — Wiktionary records breast of mutton, veal, and pork among the cuts — is a later specialization, and etymonline gives no separately dated first meat attestation. The breast is the cut from the underside of the animal, the chest between the forelegs; a comparatively fatty, layered cut that rewards slow, moist cooking. It is most often taken from veal and lamb (mutton).
Calf's liver
Cuts & Portions, France (classic in French cookery); the organ meat is eaten worldwide, Word from Old English; classic French preparations established in modern French cuisine
Taken from: veal
The word liver descends from Middle English lyvere, lyver, from Old English lifer, of Proto-Germanic origin (compare German Leber, Dutch lever). Calf's liver (French foie de veau) is an important ingredient in the cookery of France, prized as one of the tastiest of butcher's livers, typically sliced thin, floured, fried in butter and kept rare, as in the classic foie de veau à la lyonnaise.
Caul
Cuts & Portions, Europe (French and wider European charcuterie), recorded from the late Middle Ages onward
Taken from: pork, sheep, beef
The English "caul" — the lacy fatty membrane enclosing an animal's viscera — descends through French cale "cap" from Latin calautica, a type of headdress; its use for anatomical membranes is recorded from the late 14th century. In French cookery the same membrane is called crépine. Caul fat is the greater omentum, the lace-like fatty membrane surrounding the internal organs of animals such as pigs, sheep, and cows. In European kitchens it has long served as a natural wrapper and casing that bastes lean meat as it melts, used for sausages, roulades, pâtés, and preparations such as French crépinettes and English faggots.
Cock's kidneys
Cuts & Portions, France (classic French cuisine), Word: late 12th century; garnish codified in French haute cuisine (Escoffier, 1903)
Taken from: poultry
French "rognon" (kidney) is from popular Latin *renionem, accusative of *renio, derived from Latin ren "kidney"; it is first attested in the late 12th century as roignon "human kidney" (Raoul de Cambrai) and by 1205-50 refers to the kidneys of animals. "Coq" designates the cock/rooster. Cockscombs and cock's kidneys (crêtes et rognons de coq) are a classic component of French haute-cuisine garnishes; in Escoffier's Le Guide Culinaire (1903) the garniture à la Financière calls for 100 grammes of them alongside quenelles, fluted mushroom caps, truffle slices and turned olives.
Entrecôte
Cuts & Portions, First attested in French mid-18th century (1746)
Taken from: beef
Entrecôte is a compound of *entre*, "between," and *côte*, "rib" — literally "between the ribs." The culinary term is first recorded in 1746, in Menon's *La Cuisinière bourgeoise*. An entrecôte is a slice of beef cut from the rib region — a tender, well-marbled steak taken from between the ribs, traditionally grilled or braised.
Escalope
Cuts & Portions, First attested in French late 17th century (1691)
Taken from: veal, poultry, fish
Escalope is a word of obscure origin, perhaps from *écale*, "shell." Its culinary sense is first recorded in 1691, meaning a way of preparing veal — *veau à l'escalope*, in Massialot's *Nouveau cuisinier royal et bourgeois* — and by 1742 it had come to mean a thin slice of meat or fish prepared in various ways, the earliest example being of salmon. An escalope is a thin slice of meat — usually white meat, veal and poultry — or of fish flesh, fried or pan-cooked. It is a thin, quick-cooking cut, most classically veal.
Gras-double
Cuts & Portions, France (notably Lyon), attested 1611
Taken from: beef
Gras-double is a French compound of gras ("fat/fatty") and double, here meaning "panse des ruminants" (the paunch/stomach of ruminants); it is first attested in 1611 in Cotgrave's dictionary. The name reportedly refers to the thickness and colour of the cut rather than any fat content. Gras-double is the smooth part of beef tripe - the rumen - the most favoured tripe for cooking in France, best known in the Lyonnaise preparation gras-double a la lyonnaise.
Médaillon
Cuts & Portions, Culinary sense attested early 20th century (1934); word first attested 1554
Taken from: poultry, fish
*Médaillon* comes from the Italian *medaglione*, an augmentative of *medaglia*, "medal" — literally a big medal. It first appears in French in 1554 meaning just that, a large medal; the kitchen sense, a round slice of meat, is not recorded until 1934. A médaillon is a thin, rounded slice of meat, charcuterie or fish, often served cold with aspic. The name catches its shape: a small round like a coin or a medal, usually cut from the tenderloin or a filet.
Oxtail
Cuts & Portions, England (Old English culinary term), Old English term; long-standing slow-cooked culinary tradition
Taken from: beef
Oxtail is a compound of ox and tail, from Old English oxan tægl, denoting "the tail of an ox, prepared as food"; though the word once meant only an ox's tail, it now refers to the tail of cattle generally. Oxtail is a gelatin-rich cut traditionally slow-cooked as a braise or stew, and it is the classic stock base for oxtail soup.
Sheep's trotters
Cuts & Portions, France / Western Europe, term attested late 14th century; a staple of classical French cookery
Taken from: sheep
"Trotter," the culinary name for an animal's foot, is an agent noun from the verb trot, with the sense "foot of a quadruped used as food" attested in English from the late 14th century. The French equivalent, pieds de mouton, uses mouton ("sheep"), which derives from a Gaulish word *multo. A sheep's (or lamb's) trotter is the animal's foot, cooked by boiling, broiling, or frying and long used as a thrifty offal cut; a classic French treatment is pieds de mouton a la poulette, in which the cleaned, scalded feet are simmered and finished in a velouté sauce with mushrooms, cream, and egg yolk.
Shoulder
Cuts & Portions, Old English (word); butchery sense a later specialization
Taken from: veal, lamb, pork
From Middle English "shulder," from Old English "sculdor" ("shoulder of a person"), from West Germanic "*skuldro." The word's origin is anatomical rather than culinary; the butchery use — Wiktionary's "a cut of meat comprising the upper joint of the foreleg and the surrounding muscle" — is a later specialization of that body-part sense, and etymonline does not record a separately dated first culinary attestation. The shoulder is the cut taken from the upper foreleg and its surrounding muscle; because these are hard-working muscles, it tends to be a more sinewy, well-flavoured cut suited to slow cooking. It is commonly taken from veal, lamb, and pork.
Suet
Cuts & Portions, British Isles, Medieval
Taken from: beef, sheep
The word entered English in the Middle English period as "suet" or "sewet", borrowed from Anglo-Norman "suet"/"siuet", itself a diminutive of Old French "seu", ultimately from Latin "sebum" meaning tallow or fat. The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest recorded use is from before 1325 in the cookery text Diuersa Cibaria. Suet — the hard, crumbly fat found around the kidneys and loins of cattle and sheep — became central to English cookery because its high melting point (roughly 45–50°C, well above butter) let it stay solid in dough until cooking, creating a light, flaky texture once steamed. This property underpinned the English tradition of boiled and steamed suet puddings, whose ancestor was the meat-and-vegetable pottage of Roman-derived medieval cookery — though that 15th-century pottage did not itself contain suet, which was only worked into the dish during the 16th and 17th centuries as pottage was adapted into cloth-boiled puddings; recipes for actual suet-based puddings, including the forerunner of Christmas pudding, are documented from the 17th century onward, with one of the earliest known recipes dating to 1714. Early puddings were savoury and meat-heavy, but by the 18th and 19th centuries suet puddings had diversified into sweet forms like plum pudding and spotted dick, becoming a hallmark of British home cooking.
Tongue
Cuts & Portions, Widespread (Europe and the Americas), Medieval Europe
Taken from: beef
"Tongue" descends from Old English tunge "tongue, organ of speech; language," from Proto-Germanic *tungo, from the PIE root *dnghu- "tongue"; the culinary sense "beef's tongue served as food" is attested from the early 15th century. Cooked tongue (most often ox or beef) is a traditional cut across many national cuisines, prepared by boiling, braising or pickling: it is central to Mexican dishes as lengua in tacos and burritos, served with Madeira sauce in France and Belgium, and dressed with horseradish or vinegar-and-caper sauces in German cooking.
Sheep's kidneys
Cuts & Portions, Widespread (cooked kidneys evidenced from ancient Egypt), Ancient; French term attested late 12th century
Taken from: sheep
The French rognon ('kidney') descends from Vulgar Latin *rēniōnem, from Latin rēn 'kidney'; first attested in the late 12th century as roignon for the human kidney, the word was later restricted to animal kidneys and became a butcher's term. Kidneys are a commonly eaten offal - beef, veal, lamb and pork among them - and have been cooked since ancient times, with evidence of cooked kidneys surviving from ancient Egypt.
Sweetbreads
Cuts & Portions
Taken from: veal, lamb
The name joins sweet to a -bread that has nothing to do with the loaf: it likely descends from Old English bræd ("flesh"). The compound is first recorded in the sixteenth century, and why it was called "sweet" is not certain — perhaps for the mild, rich taste set against ordinary savory muscle. Sweetbreads are the culinary name for two glands eaten as offal — the thymus, from the throat, and the pancreas, from the belly — usually taken from a calf or lamb. They are typically soaked, poached, trimmed of their outer membrane, then often breaded and fried, and they appear in French, Creole, Argentine, and other kitchens.
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