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. 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. English soldiers also used the term "bully beef" for their tinned meat ration. 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, 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. Corned beef may have been just introduced as part of soldiers' rations as it was described as a novelty. 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. It was not the only meat; "Boiled tin mutton" or "bully soup" as it is more frequently called was an option for some soldiers. During the
Battle of Isandlwana, British troops reportedly discarded thousands of tins of bully beef into the
Buffalo river to lighten their retreat. 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. 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". 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", hence the compressed corned beef description on the label. The patents were declared void in 1881 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 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 articles and 'bully beef and biscuits' appearing occasionally. The next development was the
key-open can. Both J. Osterhoudt in 1866 and Arsène Saupiquet in 1882 had patented key-open cans, with possibly only Saupiquet achieving commercial success, but it was not until a cheaper method of production was developed by John Zimmerman in 1892 that American companies adopted the innovation, with Cudahy's, Libby's and Armour 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. ==See also==