[QUOTE=Anne Neville]
But the Biblical rules, at least the Jewish dietary laws, don’t talk about “meat”. They talk about “the animals that live on land”, “the creatures in the waters”,
[/QUOTE]
Hence my confusion over Why I Can’t Eat a Whale. Thanks, Anne.
Er, you aren’t going to mention to Mrs. Plant that I flubbed the test, are you? This can be our little secret. 
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
Hence my confusion over Why I Can’t Eat a Whale.
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I doubt you have a pan big enough.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
but then this tradition is embellished by numerous layers of workarounds
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My theory is that Rabbis with lots of time on their hands sat around and figured this stuff out. Hey, they didn’t have cable TV. But it’s not a cheat as I thought it was when I first joined up. It’s not against a rule to ride on an elevator on Saturday, it’s against the rule of doing work (making electrical sparks) :rolleyes: by pushing a button and using electricity. It is not against a rule to hire a guy who isn’t Jewish to push buttons for me.
Of course fish is meat.
[QUOTE=silenus]
No, it isn’t. At least to a lot of people from a number of cultures. A phrase like “Neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring” doesn’t just pop up because people like the sounds.
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So, herring aren’t fish, then?
[QUOTE=Jophiel]
From a Catholic perspective, at least, there’s no Biblical prohibition against eating meat during Lent (the observance of Lent not yet existing) so any rules regarding it are set up by the Church and subject to change as the Church sees fit. Since the Church allows for eating fish on various holy days when meat is prohibited, there’s no “getting around religious restrictions” involved. Even with the gradual weakening of abstinence requirements, fish has traditionally been acceptable even when avian and mammalian meat was prohibited.
It may be that you were speaking of other faiths and observances, so I was just piping in for the Catholic angle.
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I’m trying to include all of them in a single statement. Expect variance from that for specific groups.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
I doubt you have a pan big enough.
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If it were a small whale, you could dig a pit and stuff a camel in it, and a cow in the camel, and a sheep in the cow, and a goat in the sheep, and a swan in the sheep, and a turkey…
Which is smaller, a goat or a sheep? I’m going to have to get back to you on this.
[QUOTE=Chefguy]
Fish = meat.
Oysters = mucous.
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Yes, but what delicious mucus they are.
See now “the animals that live on land” and “the creatures of the sea” makes perfect sense to me as distinctions. How did we get from that to “fish isn’t meat”?
[QUOTE=Brown Eyed Girl]
Um, no, because it’s not animal flesh.
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so people don’t want to eat animal flesh but it’s ok to eat eggs that aren’t quite animals yet. you try telling Papa Happy Feet that.
[QUOTE=acsenray]
… So, herring aren’t fish, then?
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oh that’s just something thrown in to mislead the hunters.
[QUOTE=shijinn]
so people don’t want to eat animal flesh but it’s ok to eat eggs that aren’t quite animals yet. you try telling Papa Happy Feet that.
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Those haven’t been fertilized. As I’ve seen on this board before, it’s more like a “hen period” than an embryo. An egg also does not require the death of an animal for its production. Besides, not all vegetarians eat eggs anyway.
[QUOTE=Biggirl]
See now “the animals that live on land” and “the creatures of the sea” makes perfect sense to me as distinctions. How did we get from that to “fish isn’t meat”?
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I suspect it was when we translated that to idiomatic English. English doesn’t have a common word for “meat that comes from a four-legged land animal”.
The word “meat” can also be used for non-animal items: the “meat” of a tomato or a melon or the “meat” of a mushroom (which means the caps).
But for cooking purposes “meat” mostly refers to the muscular flesh of a mammal – organs are usually not included unless they are called “organ meats”. The muscular flesh of a bird is called “poultry” and the flesh of a fish is called fish.
I expect that this originates in the different means of getting them to the table and I imagine that if we had a butcher amoung us we might get the whole history.
Around here anyway, butchers only recently started providing birds; on market day the guy who sells chicken/duck/goose/turkey/eggs is on the other side of the market from the guy who sells pork/beef/lamb/mutton. The dairyman is in the middle as is the fishmonger. Though the words used are of course different (the irritating Dutch insist on not using the term “meat” at all 
).
Since the terms predate the supermarket my guess is that it has to do with former ways of getting meat to market and therefore different schemes of regulation.
[QUOTE=Biggirl]
See now “the animals that live on land” and “the creatures of the sea” makes perfect sense to me as distinctions. How did we get from that to “fish isn’t meat”?
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Maybe the Rabbis didn’t have a big enough pan for a whale.
[QUOTE=shijinn]
so people don’t want to eat animal flesh but it’s ok to eat eggs that aren’t quite animals yet. you try telling Papa Happy Feet that.
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What Ferret Herder said. And not all vegetarians are vegetarians because they think “meat is murder” (thank you, Morrisey). Some are because they believe they are healthier avoiding meat, or for cultural or religious reasons, or because they don’t care for the taste of it. Geez, vegetarian does not necessarily equal hippy. Get over it.
[QUOTE=Biggirl]
That’s exactly what “getting around dietary restrictions” is. Saying ‘meat is prohibited’ and then saying ‘but you can eat fish’ is a cheat. Because fish IS meat and just because the Pope said it isn’t doesn’t make it not so.
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Not at all. The Church makes the rules regarding those restrictions and if they say “No meat but eat fish” then eating fish is hardly a cheat. There might be a valid complaint that the Church should make sure its definitions of what is and isn’t meat confirm to the norm but their intent is obvious simply by the list of what you can and can’t eat.
A “cheat” would be the Church saying “no meat, period” and then me saying “Yeah, but fish isn’t really meat 'cause it doesn’t moo…” and rationalizing it to myself. That’s not the case here – fish has traditionally been an allowable exception to Catholic meat restrictions since those restrictions existed (although some folks take it upon themselves to go one better and refuse it).
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
Maybe the Rabbis didn’t have a big enough pan for a whale.
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Mmmm, pan-fried sperm whale.
[QUOTE=Biggirl]
Well now, I thought I made my standpoint perfectly clear. Fish is the flesh of an animal, so it is meat.
Lemme ask you from the culinary tradition, if fish isn’t meat then what is it?
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Fish is, unimaginatively, fish.
My understanding is that it stems not so much from religious distinctions, but rather from different properties, so to say, on the pan. You can fry carp or trout in pretty much the same way. You can cook beef or mutton using almost identical recipes, timing and spices. You cant do pork using the same recipe as for tuna. Hence distinction.
Just like inclusion of tomatoes in vegetables and not in fruits.
Now, if we get out of kitchen, and take biological or ethical or any other point of view, then yes, fish are meat. But if we talking about cooking show, then distinction of meat vs. fish makes clear sense.
YMMV, of course.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Not much call for it.
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“Not much call for it”?! It’s the single most popular foodstuff in the world!
I believe the “fish on Fridays” thing was to provide support for the local fishing industries. No cite at the moment, but I’ll try and find one.
I never understood, though, how it’s not allowed to eat cold, leftover meatloaf, but a big lobster dinner is alright.
[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
I never understood, though, how it’s not allowed to eat cold, leftover meatloaf, but a big lobster dinner is alright.
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Well now your talking about shellfish which is even less of a meat than fish is.
Really, I don’t understand how many people say fish isn’t meat. The majority of the people I asked IRL said this. When pressed for a rational as to why it isn’t meat, most said “Because it’s fish!” all incredulous as if I was the crazy one.
But once I asked for their definition of meat, things began to even out.
Let’s not even get into mollusks!