Beef and Veal

In Italy, bovine categories range from youth to age: vitello, vitellone, manzo, bue, vacca, and toro. The recipe terms you will see most often are vitello and manzo. Bue is an old-fashioned name for a castrated male animal over four years of age. Most Italian manzo comes from an animal three to four years old. Veal is milk-fed with, pale pink meat, while baby beef, or vitellone, is older, eighteen to twenty-four months of age, and the meat is dàrker, indicating the animal has eaten grain and grazed on grass. True veal is prized more than beef because of its delicate flavor and pale hue.