Meat extract

Meat extract is highly concentrated meat stock, usually made from beef. It is used to add meat flavour in cooking, and to make broth for drinking.

Meat extract was invented by Baron Justus von Liebig, a German 19th-century organic chemist. Liebig specialised in chemistry and the classification of food and wrote a paper on how boiling meat destroys its nutritional value. Liebig's view was that meat juices, as well as the fibres, contained much important nutritional value and that these were lost by boiling or cooking in unenclosed vessels. Fuelled by a desire to help feed the undernourished, in 1840 he developed a concentrated beef extract, Extractum carnis Liebig, to provide a nutritious meat substitute for those unable to afford the real thing. However, it took 30 kg of meat to produce 1 kg of extract, making the extract too expensive.