Veal is the meat of a calf — a very young cow. It is a food word, so you meet it on menus and in cookbooks, almost never anywhere else. English does this a lot: the animal has one name and the meat has another, so a young cow walking in a field is a calf, but the same animal on your plate is veal. You will see it in dish names like veal cutlet, veal chop, or the Italian dish osso buco. The meat is pale — much paler than beef — and soft, and it costs more than ordinary beef. One more thing worth knowing, because your students may meet it in reading: veal is a word with an argument attached to it. Many people avoid eating it because of how the young animals are raised, so in a news article or a discussion about animals, 'veal' often appears as the example everyone points at. Veal is uncountable, like beef and pork: say 'some veal', not 'a veal' or 'two veals'.