The carcass, which he spotted at a slaughterhouse while doing research as a graduate student, defied the usual laws of nature. The best, highest-quality steaks—picture a rib eye festooned with ribbons of white fat—typically come from animals whose bodies yield a relatively paltry amount of meat, because the fat that flavors their muscles tends to correspond to an excess of blubber everywhere else. This animal, by contrast, had tons of fat, but only where it would be delicious. “In my world,” Lawrence told me, “people would say, ‘That’s a beautiful carcass.’ ”