Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick, salty meat extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston and sold in a distinctive, bulbous jar. It is made in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire and distributed by Unilever UK.
Bovril can be made into a drink by diluting with hot water, or (less commonly) milk. It can also be used as a flavouring for soups, stews or porridge, or spread on bread, especially toast, rather like Marmite.
The first p...
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Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick, salty meat extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston and sold in a distinctive, bulbous jar. It is made in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire and distributed by Unilever UK.
Bovril can be made into a drink by diluting with hot water, or (less commonly) milk. It can also be used as a flavouring for soups, stews or porridge, or spread on bread, especially toast, rather like Marmite.
The first part of the product's name comes from Latin bos (genitive bovis) meaning "ox" or "cow". Johnston took the -vril suffix from Bulwer-Lytton's then-popular 1870 "lost race" novel The Coming Race, whose plot revolves around a powerful energy fluid named "Vril".
In the year 1870, in the war against the Prussians, Napoleon III found that his armies could not 'march on empty stomachs'. He therefore ordered one million cans of beef to feed his starving troops. The task of providing all this beef went to a Scotsman named John Lawson Johnston....
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