Of course, you don’t have to be an ex-pat cook in France for long before you find out that almost the entire stock of your local butcher is markedly different. First, foremost and initially most disconcerting is the fact that few cuts of meat bear much resemblance to their British counterparts. You have only to compare those animal diagrams, the ones that divide them up with straight lines like the colonially-dictated borders of African countries in your atlas, to see that the differences are not just a matter of terminology.

As a result, there are a lot of cuts that are simply not available here. An obvious example is roasting joints on the bone. French cuisine was comparatively late to make extensive use of ovens: hence roasting joints, though now widely available, are mostly boned and rolled. All the fat has been trimmed off to be replaced under the butcher’s cat’s-cradle of string-work with slabs of, usually, pork fat regardless of the meat concerned. This method also conceals a regrettable tendency to roll the meat the ‘wrong’ way, ie, so that one carves with instead of across the grain.

Legs and occasionally shoulders of lamb can be found on the bone but these, too, are more commonly offered boned-out. One of the few joints regularly sold on the bone is rib of beef. Significantly, this is called here côte de boeuf; in other words it is seen as a chop and recommended for grilling. For this reason, it is invariably cut one bone thick. Wanting a bigger joint to roast, we once asked a butcher for a two-bone version. What we got was two single-bone ones.

Other chops, lamb, pork or veal, are much the same as in Britain but strangely those that make up cuts like best end of neck – essential for the many recipes for noisettes d’agneau, a French term if ever I heard one – don’t exist any more than neck fillet does. While one can get a version of gammon steaks, usually not very thick, the French do not seem to know about boiling bacon: the widely-available petit salé is not really the same thing. Similarly, you will not find salt beef, brisket, silverside or ox tongue ready-salted. You have to do the salting yourself – you can get potassium from the chemist for the purpose, if you make it clear you need it for cooking rather than bomb-making.

Another lack felt by many Britons is of pork joints with their own crackling. One can buy pieces of pork skin, which make crackling of a sort but, again, it is not quite the same as having the right skin in the proper place. This is probably not something your butcher can help with, though I am glad to be able to report that good butchers will get you suet, if asked, though you will have to grate it yourself.

Happily, the fact that many of the meats you are used to are hard or impossible to find here is offset by the range of those that are rare to non-existent in Britain but readily available in France. Among these is saddle of lamb, a delicious joint that was once a much-prized regular dish on British tables but which incomprehensibly has largely disappeared there.

Offal of most kinds tends not to be much seen on British meat counters and when it is can be very expensive. This may reflect a widespread British prejudice against such products that is not shared the by the French, who often boast of how they find every part of a pig useful for cooking if not, when it comes to the bones, actually edible. Veal and lamb kidneys, liver and sweetbreads are all on the market at prices that offer good value for money. The French may not have perfected the art of making silk purses out of sow’s ears, but they do put them to good purposes in stews, as they also do with ox cheeks and calves’ feet. Pig’s trotters, on the other hand, are mostly reserved for the famous pieds et pacquets, although that may be a taste a little hard to acquire for British palates. In contrast, coeurs and gésiers de canard (duck’s hearts and gizzards to you) are well worth trying for those who can overcome their squeamishness.

In short, as in many other respects, the carnivorous life à la française offers more than enough delights to compensate for those British ones it lacks. As for those scaled-down turkeys, there’s something to be said for not having all those left-overs dragging on through Boxing Day and beyond.

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This article first appeared in the December 2006 issue of The Connexion, the newspaper for English-speakers in France. To order a free trial copy of The Connexion click here.