If cow = beef, pig = pork, and deer = venison, then where is the word for human = [flesh as food source]?
Solution 1:
There be some as call it long pig.
Solution 2:
No, there is no equivalent, but if there were...
It would probably be something like ouvrier.
The reason English has different words for the animal and the food is that the word for the food comes from French - the language of the ruling class.
From the link:
- mutton = mouton (sheep)
- beef = boeuf (cow)
- veal = veau (calf)
- pork = porc (pig)
So it stands to reason that the word for "person-flesh" would be derived from a French word for person. Now, there are lots of word for person, man or human in French, but most are near homonyms - and a French noble asking his English servant for "personne" may draw disdain.
But asking for a slice of braised ouvrier - or in the English laborer - may be a little more tasteful.
Solution 3:
Although there have been euphemisms for human meat, you seem to be wondering specifically about why human meat in particular doesn't have a well-known "dead meat food name" like other meats.
It would just be "human".
The reason is that "food" words are the rare exception, not the rule, due to an historical accident. I mean "rare" here in the sense that, of the many meats in the world eaten by English-speaking humans, exceedingly few of them have names in English that are "food" words.
The only words for meat in English that differ from the name of the animal are those few items that crossed the tables of the Norman lords after William's invasion of England in the 11th century. Because they spoke French, the normal French words for those animals were adopted as fancy names for their meat in English, by those English who aspired to reach high society by aping their Norman masters.
This process only happened for those few meats favoured at lordly tables though. It didn't get applied to foods on peasant tables, or on no-one's tables. It is therefore not a general rule in English that a meat has a special name distinct from the name of the animal; the few you note are actually the rare exceptions to the actual rule: that in general, meat is called after the animal. We call chicken meat chicken, fish meat fish, clam meat clam, turkey meat turkey, bison meat bison, horse meat horse, dog meat dog, squirrel meat squirrel, alligator meat alligator, etc.
Because human meat, like dog and cat and rat meat, would not have appeared on Norman tables, it never received a "food" name derived from badly-pronounced Norman French. (Even if human meat had appeared on Norman tables, it is unlikely that their English vassals and subjects would have attempted to copy them for the little bit of reflected prestige—more likely there would have been bloody revolution, and English today would have far fewer words borrowed from French.)
Of course, there are euphemisms for human meat—long pig, long pork, "the other other white meat"—but those exist to hide the meat's origin and aren't "food" words in the sense that beef is the non-euphemistic "food" word for cow meat.