When the term well-hung first appeared in English, it was applied to people with large, pendulous organs—men with big ears, for example. By the late nineteenth century, however, well-hung came to be applied to another kind of meat, that which is slaughtered and then hung for a time in a cool, dry room to improve its flavour. Today, a beef carcass is well-hung after being suspended for about five days at a temperature of about 2° Celsius. Formerly, however, meat was hung far longer, as a haut-gout flavour was once in vogue: in the eighteenth century, the famous gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin recommended that a pheasant be hung—unplucked—until the meat of its breast turned green, or until its flesh was so near to falling off that the bird had to be tied together before being placed on a roasting-spit. To modern tastes, such meat would be over-hung.