It’s a Tradition! Brisket By Sybil Kaplan | December 31, 2020 Brisket is the boneless meat on the lower chest of beef or veal. It worked its way into Jewish cuisine because of the location of the meat and the low cost. In the 1900s, it appeared on Jewish deli menus, particularly in Texas where the butchers, who emigrated from Germany and Czechoslovakia, had trouble selling the slow-cooking cut and created a way to dry smoke it and preserve it. The beef brisket is one of the nine beef primal cuts, though the precise definition of the cut differs internationally. The brisket muscles include the superficial and deep pectorals. As cattle do not have collarbones, these muscles support about 60% of the body weight of standing or moving cattle. This requires a significant amount of connective tissue, so the resulting meat must be cooked correctly to tenderize the connective tissue.