From The Food Encyclopedia by Jacques Rolland and Carol Sherman
A concentrated meat broth, reduced to a thick, dark brown, salty paste or cube. Bovril is considered a British classic, but it has a French and Canadian connection. The French, at war in 1870 against the Germans, ordered millions of cans of beef to feed the troops. The contract went to a Scot named John Lawson Johnston. Undeterred by a short supply of beef in Britain, Mr. Johnston traveled to Canada to develop his new product, then known as Johnston's Fluid Beef. He returned to London in 1884 and the Bovril Company was formed in 1901. Johnston concocted the name from the first two letters of the Latin word for beef "B¯os" and "Vril", meaning "an electric fluid."
