Bovril

In 1870, in the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III ordered one million cans of beef to feed his troops. The task of providing this went to John Lawson Johnston, a Scottish butcher living in Canada. Large quantities of beef were available across the British Dominions and South America, but transport and storage were problematic. Therefore, Johnston created a product known as 'Johnston's Fluid Beef', later called Bovril, to meet Napoleon's needs. By 1888, over 3,000 UK public houses, grocers and dispensing chemists were selling Bovril. In 1889, Bovril Ltd was formed to develop Johnston's business further.

During the 1900 Siege of Ladysmith in the Second Boer War, a Bovril-like paste was produced from horsemeat within the garrison. Nicknamed Chevril (a portmanteau of cheval, French for horse, and Bovril) it was made by boiling down horse or mule meat to a jelly and serving it as a tea-like mixture. Bovril also produced concentrated, pemmican-like dried beef as part of the British Army emergency field ration during the war. The ration came in the form of a pocket-sized tin can that contained the beef on one half alongside a dried cocoa drink on another half. The dried beef could be eaten alone, or mixed with water to create a beef tea.

Bovril continued to function as a "war food" in World War I and was frequently mentioned in the 1930 account Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War by Helen Zenna Smith. It describes the drink being prepared for the casualties at Mons where "the orderlies were just beginning to make Bovril for the wounded, when the bearers and ambulance wagons were shelled as they were bringing the wounded into the hospital".

When John Lawson Johnston died, his son George Lawson Johnston inherited and took over the Bovril business. In 1929, George Lawson Johnston was made Baron Luke, of Pavenham, in the county of Bedford.

Bovril's instant beef stock was launched in 1966 and its "King of Beef" range of instant flavours for stews, casseroles and gravy in 1971. In 1971, James Goldsmith's Cavenham Foods acquired the Bovril Company but then sold most of its dairies and South American operations to finance further takeovers. The brand is now owned by the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever, which bought Bovril in 2001.

In 2004, Unilever removed beef ingredients from the Bovril formula, rendering it vegetarian. This was mainly due to concerns about decreasing sales, particularly from exports due to an export ban on British beef, as a result of the growing popularity of vegetarianism, religious dietary requirements, and public concerns about bovine spongiform encephalopathy. In 2006, Unilever reversed that decision and reintroduced beef ingredients to their Bovril formula once sales increased and the beef export bans were lifted. Unilever now produces Bovril using beef extract and a chicken variety using chicken extract.

In November 2020, Forest Green Rovers Football Club announced a collaboration with the makers of Bovril to create a beet-based version of Bovril to be sold at their New Lawn stadium, where meat-based products had been removed from sale some years prior.

In South Africa Bovril is produced by the Bokomo division of Pioneer Foods.