Out and About June 2022 -issue198

JUNE 2022 | 35
part was inspired by the word Vril, the name given
to a powerful energy-giving fluid in a hugely
popular occult novel of the time, The Coming Race.
Tasked with supplying preserved beef from the
ranches of North America for Napoleon III’s army,
following their defeat due to starvation during the
1870/71 Siege of Paris, John Lawson Johnston saw
the potential for a beef extract with added protein.
He produced an extract made by heating
carcasses of cattle and reducing the liquids that
came off into a residue which was mixed with
powdered dried meat. This substance, which
Johnston believed was truly nutritious, overcame
all the problems associated with
the transportation of meat across
thousands of miles of ocean.
The French reportedly asked
Johnston, who had emigrated to
Canada by then, to devise a form of
‘canned beef’ that would supplement
the standard fare. Johnston instead
came up with a thick concentrate of
salty beef that could be either eaten
as a spread on a slice of bread or
dissolved in hot water to provide a
savoury drink, the product he had
earlier created in Edinburgh and the
rest they say, is history.
Johnston was a canny promoter. He organised a
stunt for a launch of Bovril at the 1887 Colonial and
Continental Exhibition in London by recreating a
Montreal Ice Palace in frosted glass to encourage
sales of Bovril from the chilly location.
The first Bovril adverts appeared in 1889 and one
enterprising employee went on to set up his own
advertising agency. The beef drink was his first
client. One famous advert showed a picture of the
Pope drinking a hot mug of Bovril.
It was so popular by the turn of the century that
was being sold in more than 3,000 British pubs,
grocers and chemists. It was available in South
Africa and South America around that time.
In fact, famous explorer Ernest Shackleton
was reportedly a fan
The adventurer was said to have shared
a cup of Bovril with Captain Scott on
Christmas Day of 1902, near the South Pole,
after a chilling four-hour march.
Unilever, the company that now produces
Bovril, sparked outrage six years ago by
changing its composition from beef to yeast.
The change was made amid concerns about
mad-cow disease and the growing popularity
of vegetarianism. After prolonged criticism
that the product had lost its taste, Unilever
relented and reintroduced beef extract.