Soup and bouilli

Alexis Soyer in 1846 extolled its excellence[8] and George Augustus Sala would write in 1856 in a fictional piece that it was at a restaurant in Paris, in the soup and bully, the Bourgeoise Bouillon Boeuf, that he found "true beef".

In that year in an article by Arthur Murphy (writer), George Briton, a condescending Englishman in Paris, wrote "I could by no means live upon their soup and bully",[10] and in "The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom", Sir Stentor Stile, a rich buffoon knight abroad in Paris, complained that he "could get no eatables upon the ruoad, but what they called bully, which looks like the flesh of Pharaoh's lean kine[11] stewed into rags and tatters".

[12] Although Briton and Stiles were being held up to ridicule, this view was supported in 1825 by French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin who wrote that Bouilli is flesh minus its juice ... and has disappeared from truly fashionable dinners (Le bouilli est de la chair moins son jus...et a disparu dans les dîners véritablement soignés)".

[13] In 1838 Dudley Costello's coach driver on an excursion to Antwerp and being served little square slices of bouilli explains to his friends "bully means beef with the strength b'iled out on it",[14] and in 1870 a London newspaper, in an article comparing the consumption of meat in England and France, could still write "the poorest englishman esteems "bully beef" as being fit only for the pigs".

Over the next century preserved Soup and Bouilli in tin canisters would be produced by many manufacturers and become a staple on long sea voyages for crews and passengers.

[21] This became The Scale of Medicines and Medical Stores in the Merchant Shipping Act 1867, and from 1 January 1868 Preserved Soup and Bouilli was included,[22] even though Thomas Spencer Wells had noted in the 1861 edition that "the soup and bouilli for the emigrant ships ... is the very worst kind of provisions that could be selected, as ... the captain does not know how much meat he is supplying to his men or passengers".

[30] William Clark Russell, who spent many years in the merchant navy, wrote of its 'disgusting flavour',[31] and that "canned meat or tins of soup and bouilli ... purchased in the cheapest markets may produce distempers more terrible than the scurvy they are supposed to combat".