Lamb with plum sauce

South Asia and the Caribbean, see goat meat. Lamb, hogget, and mutton, generically sheep meat, are the meat of lamb with plum sauce sheep, Ovis aries. A sheep in its first year is a lamb and its meat is also lamb.

The meat from sheep in their second year is hogget. In South Asian and Caribbean cuisine, “mutton” often means goat meat. Lamb is the most expensive of the three types and in recent decades sheep meat is increasingly only retailed as “lamb”, sometimes stretching the accepted distinctions given above. The stronger-tasting mutton is now hard to find in many areas, despite the efforts of the Mutton Renaissance Campaign in the UK. In Australia, the term prime lamb is often used to refer to lambs raised for meat. The definitions for lamb, hogget and mutton vary considerably between countries.

Younger lambs are smaller and more tender. Mutton is meat from a sheep over two years old, and has less tender flesh. In general, the darker the colour, the older the animal. Lamb — a young sheep which is less than one year old.