is a term covering various products which claim to contain all the ‘goodness’ and flavour of meat in concentrated form. They are called extracts, or, more properly, ‘extractives’, because they are soluble substances extracted from meat when it is put into water. Chemically, they include soluble inorganic salts, lactic acid, and various nitrogenous compounds which are not proteins. Manufacturers add flavourings and other ingredients according to their own formulae. Best known in Britain are Bovril (a thick, syrupy dark brown substance), and Oxo (the crumbly ‘stock cube’); both were originally intended for dilution as drinks. Their role as a dietary supplement is less than early advertising implied, but they contain B-group vitamins, and stimulate the secretion of saliva and gastric juices, a property derived from the smell and flavour of compounds produced during cooking meat. They are still used for drinks, as flavouring agents, and are added to meat dishes, soups, and numerous savoury snacks.
Commercial meat extracts have a complex history. When, in the late 18th century, scientists began to study the composition of meat, they claimed to have discovered a substance, held to be responsible for the good flavour of meat-based soups and sauces and the brown crusts of roasts, which they called ‘osmazome’ (from Greek, osme = odour, and zomos = soup). Through popularizing works by scientists and gastronomers in the first half of the 19th century, its retention came to be considered a very important part of meat cookery. (Later, it became apparent that osmazome was a complex mixture of chemicals produced by browning reactions when meat juices were concentrated over heat.)
Nutritional theory also contributed to the development of meat extracts. The French physiologist Magendie, in the early 19th century, discovered that foods containing nitrogen are essential to human growth. This attracted much attention. Osmazome was known to be rich in nitrogen, and the German chemist Baron Justus von Liebig, experimenting with the broth from boiled meat, noted that this too contained appreciable amounts of the element. In the 1840s, he undertook experiments to discover how nitrogen contributed ‘flesh-forming’ properties. He concluded that some nitrogen-containing foods were more valuable than others. These experiments laid the basis for future work on protein.
This work led to speculation that water in which meat had been steeped or cooked yielded a soluble substance of great value as food. Meat bouillon was already a traditional medicine; the scientific discoveries enhanced this and led to a vogue, now disproved but not forgotten in folklore, for jellied broth and beef tea (made by infusing scraped raw beef in hot water for some hours) as invalid food. These substances were popularly considered to be strengthening, palatable, easily digested, and stimulating to the appetite.
A domestic precedent for preserving bouillons was provided by portable soup, strong meat broth boiled until it became syrupy, at which stage it was allowed to set and dry out. This had been available since at least the early 18th century.
Liebig eventually took the view that gelatin, nitrogenous compounds in broth, and ‘osmazome’ were not flesh formers. This conclusion did not prevent him from entering commerce with a product for which extravagant nutritional claims were made. In the 1850s he had described a process for manufacturing a meat extract, and decided there was a market for such a product, based on a glut of meat available in southern hemisphere countries. In 1865 Liebig's ‘Extractum Carnis’ reached Britain from Fray Bentos in Uruguay. Later this was renamed ‘Lemco’, and was finally reformulated to become Oxo (first marketed in 1900).
Bovril originated in the 1870s when Scottish butcher and entrepreneur John Lawson Johnston emigrated to Canada and became involved in food processing. One of his inventions was ‘Johnston's Fluid Beef’, first manufactured in Quebec in 1874, and promoted with free samples at ice carnivals in Montreal. Re-established in London, Johnson began to manufacture a stronger product marketed under the brand name Bovril (from Latin, bo = ox; and vril, from vrilya = life force, a word coined in a novel by Bulwer-Lytton).
Inspired advertising implying that a small amount of meat extract contained the concentrated equivalent of much larger weights of meat, and a belief in the essential ‘goodness’ of this, ensured success for the products. Especially notable was a picture of an ox sadly regarding a pot of Bovril, captioned ‘Alas! my poor brother’. Such claims, including that by Liebig's company, that a pound of extract contained the concentrated essence of 36 lb (16 kg) of meat, were rubbished by doctors and others. Law's Grocer's Manual (c.1895) remarked that ‘Most of these preparations form pleasant stimulants, but of very doubtful nutritiveness’, a statement which did not prevent a mass of imitations, including Borthwicks Fluid Beef, Hipi Mutton Essence, Bonovin's Exox, CWS Silvox, Foster Clark's Ju-Vis, Viskor, Verox, Beefex, Vimbos, Vigoral, Hugon's Torox, and Valentine's Meat Juice. Bovril and Oxo survived, Liebig merging with Brooke Bond in 1968 to form the multinational Brooke Bond Oxo.
The manufacture of meat extracts and essences is a trade secret, but seems likely to follow Liebig's original principles of steeping raw, pulped beef in water, heating the mixture, then straining it under pressure, boiling, and evaporating the liquid to a pasty consistency. Current brands have hydrolized vegetable protein and other ingredients included in the lists on their labels.
Laura Mason has written about several aspects of British food in books including Sugar Plums and Sherbet (1998), Farmhouse Cookery (2005), and Traditional Foods of Britain (1999), which she co-authored with Catherine Brown.
