bully beef

The dish soup and bouilli was being called "soup and bully" by 1753, and probably earlier, with the meat portion referred to as "bully beef". As use of canned soup and bouilli increased on merchant ships and in the Royal Navy over the 19th century, sailors were also calling it bully beef and extended the expression to all canned meats.[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433082289335&view=1up&seq=607&q1=%22soup%20and%20bully%22 A Narrow Escape], Routledge's Every Boy's Annual, 1866, page 543[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011554733&view=1up&seq=136&q1=bully The Sailor's Word-book], Admiral W. H. Smyth, 1867

This would include corned beef, as by 1862 "very good corned beef" – in the opinion of Lord Paget – had replaced "old mahogany" on naval ships.The Naval Estimates, Morning Post, 25 February 1862

English soldiers also used the term "bully beef" for their tinned meat ration.Naval & Military Gazette and Weekly Chronicle of the United Service, 3 December 1870 This may still have been soup and bouilli in 1871 as there is an account of "bully" soup being served that year at a training exercise,"Short Commons", Birmingham Mail, 21 September 1871, but by the Ashanti War of 1873–1874, corned beef was being used, with a newspaper reporting one large tin being divided among four officers.Camp at Inquabim, Morning Post, 29 January 1874 Corned beef may have been just introduced as part of soldiers' rations as it was described as a novelty.The Ashantee War, Western Daily Press, 9 December 1873

During the Zulu Wars of 1879, corned beef was being used extensively with over 500 tons being sent to South Africa in six months. Most of this was supplied by American packing companies but about 10% came from Canada and Australia.Freeman's Journal, 15 July 1879 It was not the only meat; "Boiled tin mutton... or "bully soup" as it is more frequently called was an option for some soldiers.Letter from Zululand, Invergordon Times and General Advertiser, 11 June 1879

The iconic rectangular bully beef tin of the Boer War and First World War possibly first appeared in soldiers' rations in this campaign as it was reported that in 1879 over 4,400 tons of preserved beef had been exported to England by Libby, McNeil and Libby, with over 260 tons sent to the troops in South Africa.Our Food Supply, Morning Post, 1 August 1879 In 1875, Arthur Libby and W. J. Wilson had obtained a patent for a rectangular can with tapered sides allowing the can's contents "to slide out in one piece, so as to be readily sliced as desired".Letters Patent No. 161,848, dated April 6, 1875: Reissue no. 7923 dated October 15, 1877. United States Patent Office The meat was precooked to reduce shrinkage and, as described in another patent, packed into the can under pressure "to remove the air and all superfluous moisture",Letters Patent No. 149,276, dated March 31, 1874: Reissue no. 6370 dated April 6, 1875. United States Patent Office hence the compressed corned beef description on the label. The patents were declared void in 1881[https://books.google.com/books?id=Y-1CAQAAMAAJ Decisions of the Commissioner of Patents for the Year 1882, pages 578 and 579] when prior art was shown to exist, allowing other packing houses to produce similar cans.

Private J. Smith of the 91st Highlanders used the expression "bully beef and biscuits" in a letter describing the Battle of Gingindlovu. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph published his letter on 14 August 1879, the first known instance of "bully beef and biscuits" in print.A Soldier's Account of Ginghilovo, Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 14 August 1879 A few years later, owing to the intense interest it created in England, correspondents accompanied Lord Wolseley's expedition to relieve General Charles George Gordon and his Egyptian troops, besieged in Khartoum. The journey up the Nile took months and with no fighting to report, journalists wrote about the more mundane aspects of soldier's lives with mentions of 'bully beef' appearing in a majority of their articlesThe Nile campaign, London Evening Standard, 17 October 1884 and 'bully beef and biscuits' appearing occasionally.The Nile campaign, London Daily News, 4 December 1884

The next development was the key-open can. Both J. Osterhoudt,{{Cite web|url=https://patents.google.com/patent/US58554A/en|title=Osteehoudt}} in 1866, and Arsène Saupiquet{{Cite web|url=https://patents.google.com/patent/US321056|title=Arsene saupiquet}} in 1882, had patented key-open cans, with possibly only Saupiquet achieving commercial success,{{Cite web|url=https://www.saupiquet.be/fr/a-propos-de-saupiquet/histoire|title = Histoire | Saupiquet}} but it was not until a cheaper method of production was developed by John Zimmerman in 1892Letters Patent nos. 486521, 486522 and 486523 dated November 22 1892, United States Patent Office. that American companies adopted the innovation, with Cudahy's,Advertisement for Cudahy's Corned Beef, Empire News & The Umpire (Lancashire England), 29 January 1893, page 1 Libby's and Armour[http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3609790 'Australian Tinned Meats'], The Brisbane Courier 19 Sep 1895, Page 4, Col. 6 soon producing corned beef in the easy-to-open tins. The British Government was slow to adopt the new cans, and in 1898 the Civil and Military Gazette saw it as scandalous that they were still supplying meat in "unget-at-able" tins when the new cans were available. Civil & Military Gazette (Lahore), 18 May 1898

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Category:Beef

Category:Military food of the United Kingdom

Category:Military food