The term "beef" in Russia usually means the meat of all cattle, including yaks and oxen.

In Old Church Slavonic, "beef" meant all cattle or just a herd.

However, beef meant only bull MEAT. Eating cow meat in Rus' was not accepted. They were kept solely for the sake of MILK.

In turn, the Old Slavonic "beef" is formed from the Indo-European root "gou". In other languages, you can find analogues of this word: "cow" - a cow in English, "kov" - in Armenian.

Over time, "beef" fell into disuse, but beef meat remained. Only now it meant not the meat of a bull, but the meat of all cattle.

It is curious that a similar question was asked to Vladimir Putin on a direct line in 2018. Then the president forwarded the question to Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Gordeev, but he could not answer.

The meat of cows is already being eaten systematically, but they call it, as before, "beef", which means "beef". In RUSSIA, meat is not classified by gender, but has the common name beef.

In fact, this word masks the real quality of the meat, and the term "veal" is used for young meat, which is of higher quality. There is no such thing as beef in Western European cuisine. For the preparation of meat dishes they use bovine meat or veal. Cow or cow meat is used very rarely and mainly as second-class meat.

Beef can also have different names based on the age of the animals. Dairy veal is meat from young calves aged 2 weeks to 3 months. Young beef - from 3 months to 3 years and just beef - over 3 years old.