From the middle of the nineteenth century the supply of meat in Britain became a matter of national concern. The British had long prided themselves on being a meat-producing and meat-eating people, the roast beef of Olde England was considered a standard national dish and a symbol of national pride.[1] But from the 1840s to the 1870s, while the population steadily increased, there was no increase in home meat production and meat prices were moving upward. At the same time the growing urban population and rising incomes resulted in more people entirely dependent on the market for the supply of meat, and more people in a position to afford to buy meat, which meant even more pressure on the meat supply. The situation was further exacerbated by an outbreak of rinderpest (Cattle plague) in England and Europe in the 1860s, followed by interruptions of supply during the Franco-Prussian War in the next decade. At the same time the nutritional value of the working-class diet was also causing concern, since the well-being of the nation depended on the health of the labouring classes:
The amount of nourishment which a people obtains must exert a large influence over the national character. An ill-fed nation can scarcely be a healthy one, and certainly it will be deficient in bodily strength and enterprise, whilst a sufficiently fed people, having these characteristics in a high degree will be able to acquire wealth, which may be regarded as the material foundation for the stability of an empire and influence among nations.[2]
Technology, it was hoped, would provide a solution.
One of the significant advances of the nineteenth century was the development of canning on an industrial scale and from as early as 1813 the Royal Navy and British explorers had been provisioned with tinned meat and tinned vegetables. More economical pound for pound since there were no bones, and easy to store, preserved meat, a product previously associated with ship-board life, adventure, war fare, hardship and privation, was now seen as entirely appropriate for domestic use.
Fig. 1 ‘Preserved Meat of the Navy’, Times (London), 3 January 1852, p. 7.
Meanwhile in Australia the first experiments with meat canning began in the early 1840s. However, the discovery of gold which put paid to cheap raw materials and reduced the available labour force, and a major scandal over the supply of inadequately processed tinned meat to the Royal Navy, caused the Australian industry to falter until overproduction and falling prices encouraged livestock producers to consider less wasteful and potentially more profitable alternatives to simply boiling down carcasses to produce tallow. Exporting canned meat was a promising proposition for Australian producers in the late 1860s. Given the situation in Britain the canned product was cheaper than fresh meat and faced no competition from America, currently embroiled in Civil War. There seemed to be good prospects for making ‘the redundancy of one part of the earth subserve to the scarcity of other parts’.[3]
The boom years for Australian canned meat were 1869–1871. Through agents in London several companies supplied the market with meat in a variety of forms – from soups, stewed kidneys, sheep’s tongues, calf’s head and tripe and onions to, rabbit and even kangaroo, but the term ‘Australian meat’ appears to have been used most frequently to refer to tins of solid lumps of unadorned beef and mutton. Selling these products proved to be no easy task.
The savings to be made purchasing meat without any wastage made using tinned meat particularly attractive to large institutions with many mouths to feed. [4] Australian meat was used widely in hospitals, workhouses, goals, lunatic asylums, and other public institutions which did little to enhance its reputation. The general presumption was that the authorities were purchasing ‘a “cheap and nasty” substitute for butcher’s meat and there were strikes and demonstrations against the food in some of these establishments.[5] Some thought the eaters too fastidious:
The British pauper is about the most dainty specimen of humanity in the kingdom. If he thinks his guardians are supplying him with anything they get at a very cheap rate, no matter how good it might be, he will turn his nose up at it.[6]
while others suggested the suppliers were making a serious mistake by encouraging prejudice:
The precise prejudice they have to face is that their meat is wholesome, but only good enough for paupers and convicts, and they deliberately go and give that prejudice a seeming foundation.[7]
Outside the workhouses and asylums there was a suspicion that the meat itself was inferior, not just in terms of the cuts of meat used, but that Australian animals were somehow not as good as English stock.[8] And there were those who believed that the contents of the tins might not even be beef or mutton. The idea that the product was both cheap and inferior also led to questioning its nutritional benefit. Many supporters were at pains to explain that all the goodness was retained in the tin after processing.[9] A Dr. Williams conducted a well-publicised experiment with the inmates of the Hayward’s Heath Lunatic Asylum to demonstrate that people could thrive on Australian meat, but entrenched suspicion was hard to overcome. [10] After the lurid reports which had accompanied the discovery of the putrid meat supplied to the Royal Navy in the 1850s there were many who simply thought canned meat was unsafe to eat. But the most difficult and most persistent problem was the product itself.
Because the preservation process involved maintaining high temperatures over long periods, up to 260 degrees Fahrenheit for as much as 3 hours, followed by slow cooling, the contents of the cans was severely overcooked. Writer Anthony Trollope said of Australian meat that it came out of the tins in England in a condition fit for use but it did not come out ‘in a condition pleasant to the eye’.[11] The tinned product bore little resemblance to fresh meat. It had a ‘tendency to break into long fibres’ and was described as insipid, ugly and unappetising.
Not surprisingly suggestions for using Australian meat concentrated on disguising its appearance and counteracting its lack of flavour. One of the great drawbacks of Australian meat was that it did not lend itself to roasting, and its use in stews and curries was limited by the fact that it ‘disintegrated’ when subjected to further cooking. If it had to be eaten hot, then it was important to remember that the meat only needed to be warmed through and served with a gravy or tasty sauce, as Mrs Beeton recommended:
That it is cooked too much and should be just warmed through in a good gravy is as a rule true of all cold meat … but it is especially true here. That the meat is tasteless and insipid necessitates a high-flavoured or sharp sauce. And because the tough fibres and unusual consistence of the meat constitute one of its greatest faults, it is often advisable to chop or mince it before serving. Perhaps the best plan of all is to take out any large and well-shaped pieces that may be suitable for serving whole in a gravy, and then to reserve the scraps for mincing separately as croquettes, rissoles, &c.[12]
By its very nature Australian meat was hardly suited to the rudimentary equipment and scarce resources which characterised working class and many middle-class kitchens. For the poor meat was a rarity to be savoured and enjoyed rather than something to be camouflaged and excused. Moreover, the eating of meat did not just assuage hunger, it conferred status. It was suggested that Australian meat had been so widely ridiculed that working men were almost ashamed to take a tin home lest it should be thought that they could afford nothing better.[13] Servants were accused of being averse to eating tinned meat themselves and unwilling to prepare the product to advantage for their masters. Even its defenders had to admit that Australian canned meat conjured ‘a hugger-mugger, hand-to-mouth, all-work-and-no-play sort of existence, which may be endured, but in which only a peculiarly constituted mind could rejoice’.[14]
By the 1870s, outside its use in public institutions, the greatest amount of Australian meat was being purchased by those who usually ate large amounts of fresh meat and could afford to experiment, what the author of Recipes for Australian Meat described as ‘such a class as would not hesitate to expend a small extra sum, if, by such expenditure, the flavour and quality of the dish be thereby improved’.[15] That is households who could afford to serve their tinned meat with pickles or salads, buried under well-flavoured mayonnaise, elaborately decorated with hard-boiled eggs, cucumber, capers, or radishes, or even set in aspic.[16]
Fig. 2 ‘Recipes for Tinned Meat’, ‘Isabella Beeton’, The Book of Household Management (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1888), p. 568
At the tables of the wealthy tinned meat could also be attractively stored or presented in a decorated ring dish purposely designed to conceal the contents.
Fig 3 ‘Ring Dish for Australian Meat’, A. G Payne, Choice Dishes at Small Cost (London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., 1882), p. 90.
For those with means eating tinned meat was a matter of choice, a demonstration of modern, scientific thinking and a commitment to the golden virtues of economy and thrift, without which, according to Mrs Beeton, no household could hope to prosper.[17] The less wealthy regarded resorting to Australian meat as humiliating, while the very poor clung to eating whatever scraps of meat they could afford as a sign that they were not entirely destitute.
By 1876 the chairman of the Society of Arts could claim that preserved meat was ‘a recognised article of household consumption’.[18] Canned foods in general had gained wide acceptance by the 1880s and in the 1888 edition of Beeton’s Book of Household Management tinned meat was described as ‘an addition to an already sufficient diet’ but nonetheless an absolute necessity, ‘chiefly valuable because it is at hand when butcher’s shops are not, and is convenient to furnish forth an impromptu meal’.[19] Clearly Australian meat did find a market in Britain but it was never adopted by the lower orders with either the enthusiasm or the gratitude that its promoters expected.[20]
Fig. 4 ‘You Must Learn to Love Me’, ‘Punch’s Almanack for 1873’, Punch (London) Vol. 64, 17 December 1872.
Logic deemed tinned meat offered the working classes a welcome economical alternative to their usual ‘inferior cuts’ and provided an opportunity for even the poorest to include more meat in their diet. The supposed inadequacy of working-class meals was predicated on scientific principles but was also filtered through the tastes and attitudes of men accustomed to roasted sirloin of beef and leg of mutton. For them, even though they recognised that it was no substitute for the real thing, tinned meat seemed inordinately preferable to meals based around fatty bacon, offal, marrow bones and sheep’s head. Similarly, they interpreted limited facilities and endless meals of stews and soups as indicative that the working classes were ‘ignorant of the proper use of food’ and were ‘deplorable’ cooks rather than recognising demonstrations of resourcefulness and ingenuity.[21] Men of wealth and learning attributed the indifference to Australian meat to the fixed prejudices and settled habits of the labouring classes, failing to understand the value and meaning of fresh meat and making no allowance for their own bias and preconceptions.
Despite continuous improvement in technology, the export of canned meat from Australia was not a success. Fluctuating fresh meat prices in Britain meant that Australian canned meat was not always an economical alternative. Inconsistent supply of the canned product, dictated by the market for livestock in Australia, was only exacerbated by its poor quality. By the mid-1870s Australian tinned meat was outclassed by cooked, compressed meat products from North America which were cheaper, better quality and packaged in more attractive and more convenient tapered rectangular cans.[22] Canned meat now also had to compete with chilled and frozen meat which provided the market with a product which looked identical to fresh meat, performed like fresh meat and tasted like fresh meat.[23] The export trade in Australian tinned meat never made a substantial contribution to feeding Britain’s poor. At its best the Australian product only ever represented 7 per cent of the British meat supply. [24]
Overcoming the suspicions surrounding new products and convincing people to eat what is deemed to be good for them are problems which food technologists and dieticians continue to face. In the case of meat however all classes of society were happy to eat more once it came in a form which was both cheap and acceptable. The promotion of Australian tinned meat and the controversy that aroused, helped to establish the notion that meat should be both plentiful and affordable and further whet Britain’s appetite for meat. What on one side was a potential answer to overstocking and on the other a solution to impending shortages and dietary deficiency led to an insatiable demand for cheap meat. The export of Australian tinned meat was an early step along the road to what Paul Young and Chris Otter call ‘planetary meatification’, a small, but no less important, move in the direction of ‘the voracious, environmentally unsustainable way the global meat complex operates today’.[25]
[1] Roast beef and plum pudding ‘our standard national dishes’, J. C. Buckmaster, Buckmaster’s Cooking, being an abridgement of some of the lectures delivered in the Cookery School at the International Exhibition for 1873 and 1874; together with a collection of approved recipes and menus (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1874), p. 7 “For what are your soups and your sauces/ Compared to the beef of old England!/ And, oh! The old English roast beef!” For tradition of meat eating, especially beef, see Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food. Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, 2nd edition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996) p. 102–3.
[2] Dr. Edward Smith, ‘On Public and Private Dietaries’, Journal of the Society of Arts (hereafter JAS) 12, no. 587, (19 February 1864), p. 212
[3] Andrew Wynter, ‘Good Food for the Millions’, in Peeps into the Human Hive volume 2 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1874), p. 139. I am indebted to Professor Paul Young for this reference.
[4] Keith Farrer, To Feed a Nation: A History of Australian Food Science and Technology (Melbourne: CSIRO Publishing, 2005), p. 46. Exporting 4 and 6 lb tins made more sense economically and 2 lb tins were more expensive to purchase on the London market, i.e. the meat was only cheap in the larger sizes. In his articles for the Argus J. J. Manley was at some pains to point out the problem with both pricing and supply. See ‘Australian Food Products and their Use in Great Britain’, Argus (Melb.), 18 January 1873, p. 1 and, 24 January 1873, p. 6. See also ‘Australian Preserved Meat in England’, Argus, 7 May 1872, p. 6 re. problems with supply and problem of sending consignments to be auctioned.
[5] Manley, Argus, 18 January 1873; Keith Farrer, A Settlement Amply Supplied: Food Technology in Nineteenth Century Australia(Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1980), p. 139.
[6] Manley, Argus, 24 January 1873, p. 6.
[7] Anon, ‘The Australian Meat Companies’, The Spectator (London), 23 December 1871, vol. 44. No. 2269, p. 1555
[8] Buckmaster, p. 105; Australian Meats and American Preserved Provisions, How to Cook, Eat and Enjoy in 80 Different Ways (London: George Howe, 187?) p. 14.
[9] J. J. Manley, The Age of Tin (London: William Tweedie, 1872) p. 8; Buckmaster, pp. 105-6.
[10] For Williams’s experiment see ‘Nutritive Value of Preserved Meat’, Argus (Melb.), 7 May 1872, p. 7, also Manley, Tin, p. 10.
[11] Anthony Trollope, Australia (Gloucester: Allan Sutton, 1987) vol 1, p. 168.
[12] Isabella Beeton’, The Book of Household Management (London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1888), p. 565. See also Australian Meats and American Preserved Provisions, How to Cook, Eat and Enjoy in 80 Different Ways (London: George Howe, 187?), p. 5. For roasting see Manley, Tin, p. 8. ‘Food Committee’, JAS 16, no. 789 (3 January 1868), p. 103, report on evaluation of McCall’s Australian boiled beef notes ‘any further application of heat deteriorates it and diminishes its usefulness as an article of food’, and advises ‘disintegration … inevitable if it is further cooked’.
[13] ‘Australian meat banquet at Birkenhead’, The Australasian, 2 January 1875, p. 1. See also ‘Domestic Economy Conference’, JAS25, no. 1290 (10 August 1877), p. 870 comments by Reverend J. P. Faunthorpe that ‘the vulgar prejudice that cheap foods are bad needs to be dispelled’.
[14] ‘Australian meat’, Saturday Review (of politics, literature, science and art) (London), 14 November 1874, 38 no. 994, pp. 634–5.
[15] ‘A Cook’, Recipes for Cooking Australian Meat with Directions for Preparing Sauces Suitable for the Same, (London: Chapman and Hall, 1872), p. 71.
[16] Manley, Tin, p. 8; Buckmaster, p. 101 ‘The best way is to make soup with the jelly, and eat the meat cold, with vegetables or salads.’ Beeton, p. 568; ‘A Cook’, p. 21, 22. Although cold mutton, however wholesome and nutritious, was ‘not provocative of enthusiasm’,Saturday Review (of politics, literature, science and art), 14 November 1874, 38 no. 994, pp. 634–5. See also ‘Food Committee’, JSA16, no. 789 (3 January 1868), p. 104, recommending could be eaten cold but ‘few persons would like it in that condition’.
[17] Beeton, p. 2.
[18] Chairman’s address to the Society of Arts, Journal of the Society of Arts, 25, no. 1252 (17 November 1876) p. 8.
[19] Beeton p. 565 and Preface, p. vi. Also see Lizzie Heritage, Cassell’s New Universal Cookery Book (London: Cassel and Company, 1894).
[20] Rebecca J. Woods, ‘The Shape of Meat. Preserving Animal Flesh in Victorian Britain,’ Osiris 35 (2020), p. 137. My thanks to Professor Woods for making this article available.
[21] G. C. Steet, ‘On the Preservation of Food Especially Fresh Meat and Fish, and the Best Form for Import and Provisioning Armies, Ships, and Expeditions', JSA, 13, no 644, (24 March 1865), p. 315 ‘poor cooks’;p. 316 ‘this description of meat was never intended to come into competition with the sirloin of beef and the leg of mutton, which were the food of the rich’ but rather ‘with the inferior parts, which for the most part fell to the lot of the poorer classes as being within their means’. See JSA, 15, no. 743 (15 February 1867), p. 190 for report of Food Committee: working classes ‘ignorant of the proper use of food’, and guilty of ‘the most wasteful’ settled habits and fixed prejudices and ‘Deplorable cooking’. Also Dr. Thudichum’s comments reported by the Food Committee, JSA 15, no 746 (8 March 1867), p. 240, ‘As the common people do not know how properly to cook the simplest thing, they would not succeed in imparting appetizing qualities to preserved food materials’.
[22] By 1875 Americans had introduced tapered cans which made the contents easier to remove, Farrer, Settlement, p. 90, in addition the product was cheaper since it travelled less distance. Re. cooked, compressed meat, see Richard Perren, Taste, Trade and Technology. The Development of the International Meat Industry Since 1840 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), p. 45. Compressed meat could be removed from the can in a solid block ready to slice and serve.
[23] See ‘Chairman’s Report’, JSA, 25 no. 1252 (17 November 1876), pp. 8–9.
[24] Farrer, Settlement, p. 129.
[25] Paul Young, ‘Carnivorous Empire: The Global Growth of Victorian Britain’s Meat Markets’, Victorian Review, 45 (2), 2019, p. 180. Again, my thanks to Professor Young for providing me with a copy of this paper. For ‘meatification’ see Chris Otter, Diet for a Large Planet, Industrial Britain, Food Systems and World Ecology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), p. 11, and particularly Chapter 1 ‘Meat’, pp. 21–47.
