Makes it beefy - the royal tonic invented by a German chemist that became a kitchen staple

There are a number of books in Mum's collection that were issued by food companies as part of their marketing. One such is Cooking the Oxo Way, which probably dates from the 1950s, or perhaps a little earlier.

It has recipes for main courses, pies and puddings that are all enhanced by the addition of an Oxo cube. I'm not convinced by the sandwiches section which recommends making Oxo butter - 1oz of butter to 1/2 an Oxo cube - but what do I know? I'm sure it does give 'zest to fillings' and definitely crusts on...who wants a dainty sandwich when you're using Oxo butter?

Part of the pleasure of this little project is following up unfamiliar references, via the power of Google and Wikipedia, and opening up a whole world of new knowledge about the everyday and the commonplace in our lives, which often prove to be far from commonplace in their origins.

The humble Oxo cube has a noble history which begins in Hesse, now Germany, in 1840. Let's start with the advert at the front of the book for the Liebig's Extract of Meat Company, the parent company of Oxo Ltd, which boasts of factories from Montreal to Dar-Es-Salaam.

The 'father of the Oxo cube' and, incidentally Marmite, was the celebrated 19th century German chemist, Justus von Liebig,  a remarkable man born in Hesse whose work transformed scientific education and agriculture as well as inventing a way to give "added strength and savour" to your meat dishes. Liebig lived through the year without a summer of 1816, which hit Hesse very hard and was said to have shaped much of the scientist's work. Amongst his many achievements was the development of a manufacturing process for beef extract and, helped by George Christian Giebert, a young Belgian engineer, the founding of the Liebig Extract of Meat Company, using South American cattle. European cattle had proved to be too expensive and so, until Giebert's suggestion, the extract had been used as a tonic dispensed by the royal pharmacy.

The plant was owned by the Societe de Fray Bentos Giebert & cie which, by 1875, was producing 500 tonnes of extract, as the extract grew in popularity and became a staple of kitchens, soldiers' rations and was even found in the trunks of European adventurers like Livingstone. Fray Bentos began to manufacture frozen, chilled and, of course, corned beef. Our little book has a nod to this in the advert on the back of the booklet for Fray Bentos soups and pastes which "will captivate the palate of all those who appreciate savouriness at its best" (don't you love the advertising language of the past?- which company tries to 'captivate a palate' these days?)

The Oxo cube went into production in 1910 increasing the popularity of the product, as the cubes were cheaper than the liquid. In the 1920s, Oxo became part of the London landscape with the acquisition of premises on the South Bank and the building of the familiar tower. Its architect, Albert Moore, incorporated the design as windows on the tower to get around a ban on skyline advertising. By1924,  the Liebig Co. and its tower was taken over by the Vestey group, who would have owned the company at the time our book was published.

Thus, a little book produced for marketing 50 years ago which sat tucked away on Mum's bookshelf hints at a bigger story of chemistry, commerce, and cattle farms in Uruguay. It begins with a young man experiencing famine in Germany leading to a little red box of beefy cubes in your store cupboard. Times and food fashions may change but we all still have them tucked away somewhere. Does anyone still, as the book recommends on the last page,"slip one or two Oxo cubes in your pocket and be ready to make a beefy drink at any time."?

Read more
Justus Von Liebig on Wikipedia
Oxo (Wikipedia)
Darkness by Lord Byron (about 1816, the year without a summer)
10 things about Marmite

Oxo timeline
Oxo Tower our history
Argentina - the history of Oxo