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Bovril, Staffordshire

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The drink of champions, mid-table mediocrities, and certainties for relegation, Bovril more than any other drink – except maybe beer – is associated with British football at its wettest and windiest. Warming from the inside out; reviving fingers chilled beyond movement; cheering even when you are three down at half-time and things look like getting worse.
Though supporting Scunthorpe , Stockport or Sunderland is obviously more heroic than a jaunt to the South Pole, Shackleton and Scott both supped the stuff on their pleasure trips to the Antarctic. And even the drink’s very origin is linked to heroism – well, the French army: Scotsman John Lawson Johnston developed it to supply the French during the Franco-Prussian War, first dubbing the originally London -made concoction (now produced in Burton-upon-Trent ) Johnston’s Fluid Beef. He made a fortune – his son was able to obtain a peerage in 1929, though just as today of course peerages then were not for sale - and continued his marketing campaign by changing the name to Bovril in 1886.
The genteel Edwardian phrase ‘beef tea’ sums up how most of us take our Bovril: a gloopy spoonful stirred into boiling water. Served at many, perhaps most British football grounds in the colder months it is often boosted with a dash of Tabasco or a shake of white pepper. It does though make truly excellent gravy to go with roast beef, or at a pinch with lamb, a spoonful simply stirred into the juices in the roasting pan.
When the BSE crisis was with us the makers decided to make the product vegetarian, claiming that any change in flavour was barely noticeable; the difference for some aficionados being as slight as say the difference between Liverpool’s first team and Yeovil’s reserves. Sanity - and the dropping of EU restrictions on British beef - has seen a return to the carnal delight that is beefy Bovril.

Brit Quote:
Theoretical principals must sometimes give way for the sake of practical advantages. - William Pitt (The Younger)
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On this day:
Battle of Berwick - 1296, Fire Claims 19 Glasgow Firefighters - 1960
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