Well, I don't know when people started aging beef or rather, calling it aged beef. They have probably been aging beef for a long long time. But I bet whatcha don't know is that before the great depression, Americans ate another kind of "aged beef". Back then, local cow country fare was an old cow that had failed to have a calf and got fat. City beef were steers that were shipped by rail and often driven hundreds if not thousands of miles. These steers were allowed to graze on their journey and it was often planned that they would gain in weight on the trip, especially if the reason for the drive happened to be a bad drought.
I read all this in Ben Green's book "Wild Cow Tails". He claimed that such beef was tougher, but better flavored and gave more energy to work through the day. He said when he was little it was his job to go every morning to the general store and buy a steak for every member of the family for breakfast. He also claimed that the switch was made because of cheap corn, because people no longer had the money to age beef that long and because most people were riding around in cars by then so didn't have to work as hard and didn't think to complain. Their next generation grew up never tasting the taste of the previous generation and thus grew up not knowing what they were missing. Now Americans have a taste for juicier, paler, tasteless and mushy corn fed beef.
The Native Americans tried to kill and eat the biggest bucks, bull moose, elk and bison. Remember Ajonus said they ate tougher cuts? They killed the toughest critters they could. Similar to the Greeks whose preference was for 5 year old bull meat.
I definitely prefer tough shank cuts, neck muscle, organs and fat to the rest of an animal. I prefer older, darker meat animals.
How about you?
