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extract named Vigoral, marketed in solid concentrated form, each pound of it containing, so its producers claimed, the essence of 4 5 pounds of lean fresh beef, which made Liebig’s 40 pounds of beef to the pound of essence look rather meagre.
    By the mid 1880s, Bovril was also flourishing. Bovril’s special claim was that it combined the stimulative properties of a meat extract with the nutritive constituents of meat. To achieve this end, so much desired by Baron Liebig (he had died in 1873 and was succeeded as head of the company by his son Baron H. von Liebig) the albumen and fibrine from fresh beef were desiccated, reduced to powder and added to the basic beef extract. It was beef on beef. As sustenance for polar explorers and warriors fighting Britain’s endless colonial wars, Bovril was already becoming a formidable rival to Liebig’s Extract.
    Another serious competitor for Liebig’s sales was a Swiss Maggi product which was launched in the 1890s. This was a concentratedconsommé, ingeniously marketed in capsules, costing only 2d each and containing enough concentrate to make three-quarters of a pint of ‘perfect clear soup, strong and appetising’, its admirers maintained. There were also those who held that Maggi’s thirty-three varieties of French vegetable soups in tablets were equally invaluable, even indispensable.
    Keeping up with its competitors in the field of advertising and publicity was one of the Liebig Company’s brilliant successes. The little cookery book was supplemented in many appealing ways with decorative souvenirs, most notably with sets of cards to be exchanged for wrappers from the jars. A seemingly inexhaustible series of brightly litho-printed cards featured an immense variety of subjects ranging from episodes in the history of ancient Rome to the contemporary seaside and its bathing machines, scenes from Shakespeare’s plays to decisive battles, popular operas, famous love stories, harlequinades. The familiar Liebig jar appeared of course on every card, and on the reverse side of each was a recipe. Wherever Liebig’s Extract was sold the cards were printed in the appropriate language – German, Italian, French, Russian, Dutch, English. Long before the advent of the cigarette card, Liebig’s pictorial cards had become collectors’ pieces.
    Towards the end of the century, at a time when all other European countries fully recognised and protected Liebig’s right to the exclusive use of the name, Britain was the exception. Prior to the passing of the 1875 Trade Marks Act, unscrupulous imitators had been permitted by the British courts to appropriate the name, the design of the jars, the labels, the wrapping, of Liebig’s product. The directors of the British end of the Liebig Company at last decided that enough was enough. A drastic change of name was sought. The one they came up with – and no bad one – was Oxo. In June 1900 it was registered as a British trade mark, protected in all European countries. A new name for the new century.
    For Oxo a new jar was devised, in a shape reminiscent – not entirely by coincidence, it may be supposed – of the already familiar Bovril bottle. Suggestions thrown out in the early advertising copy to the effect that a drink of Oxo was appropriate to any number of daily occasions could hardly have been more innocent. They included such non-events as before shopping and after shopping; after motoring; in foggy weather; in wet weather; when depressed; in long intervals between meals; when too busy for ordinary meals. Then came the harder sell, not exactly guileless. ‘Oxomakes children grow into strong men and women’ was surely a reckless claim. There was also talk of ‘the energising, nourishing force of the best beef’ entering the bloodstream ‘in the shortest possible time’, references to ‘the rapid and continuous nourishment of prime lean beef’ and to ‘the highly nutritious properties of Oxo extract’. People believed the