🇧🇪 The cattle breeds of Belgium

Belgian cattle are met mostly on the plate, as beef, butter and cheese. Beef has been eaten since prehistoric times, rare under the Romans yet the everyday meat of medieval commoners. Now it appears braised in beer, grilled with fries or minced raw on bread.

• Ancient Belgians probably kept cattle and sheep before Roman rule
• Carbonade flamande stews beef in beer instead of red wine
• Medieval commoners ate beef and lamb more than any other meat
• Church fasts once cut meat from at least 195 days a year
• The Franks chose butter over olive oil and ale over wine

Cattle in Belgium

Cattle keeping in Belgium is easiest to tell through food, where the animals surface as beef, butter and cheese. The thread runs deep, though. The earliest Belgians are thought to have kept cattle and sheep, and when farming took hold around 2000 BC the poor lived mainly on milk, porridge and legumes. Frankish settlers ran crops and livestock together and chose butter over olive oil, while Flemish and Brabant farmers who manured their fields could keep more stock. Beef has moved with class and time: rare under Rome, the everyday meat of medieval commoners, and now the heart of a beer-braised stew. Neighbouring France, Germany and the Netherlands share much of this table.

Milk, butter and beef

Butter is the oldest dairy story: the Franks picked it over olive oil, and monks later made cheese in their monasteries. Milk nourished early populations, stirred into cereal porridge. Beef arrives in three familiar forms: carbonade flamande, a stew in which Belgian beer replaces the red wine of the French original; steak-frites, the brasserie pairing of steak and fries; and filet américain, very finely minced beef eaten raw on bread. In Celtic times salt-cured beef was already being imported from the British Isles. Church fasts once barred meat for at least 195 days a year, shaping when any of it reached the table.