Veal is the meat of a young calf of domestic cattle (Bos taurus), slaughtered within the first months of life. Pale pink and fine-grained, it is the most tender of the bovine meats — soft and delicate, with little fat, little connective tissue and a mild, faintly sweet, milky-savoury flavour far gentler than mature beef. Long central to Italian, Austrian and French cooking, it is pounded into thin scaloppine, braised as shank for osso buco, and breaded for Wiener schnitzel.