Does it taste better if you call it something different?

If you're having meat for a meal at a restaurant, you don't generally order "cow" or "pig". You order "beef" and "pork". So there are words for some of the animals that we consume. However, you do order "chicken" and "turkey". But you don't order "deer" or "sheep" - you order "venison" and "mutton". However, you do order "duck" and "rabbit" and "lamb". And of course, you order "fish" and the various multitude of shellfish (e.g., clams, lobsters, crab).

So why are there "meat" words for some animals but not for others? There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for which animals get a different word. Is it meat that we eat on a very regular basis? Well, that works for beef and maybe pork but lots of chicken is also eaten, so that doesn't work. Maybe it's the cuteness factor. I'm not sure I'd consider cows and pigs awfully cute, but some might, so ok, they get a different food name. But rabbits and lambs can be amazingly cute, and they don't get food names. Toss that theory aside. Maybe it's animals that you're likely to have both as livestock and as pets, so you need a way to differentiate. That would make sense for the cows and pigs. But some people have chickens and ducks and rabbits as pets, but they don't get a different food name. And most people don't have deer as pets, but they do get a food name. OK, no go there either. Maybe it has to do with baby animals. Fertilized duck eggs are called "balut" instead of "duck embryos", but ducks don't have a food name, so that must be it. Ummm, except that lambs are baby sheep, and they don't have food names, but the adult sheep *do* have a food name. Back to the drawing board.

Who decided to come up with the alternate names and why? What would happen if I was at a restaurant and ordered a cowburger? Or if someone else ordered a pigchop?