Lemco

I’m not sure many people will have heard of Lemco today, but most people will have heard of and possibly eaten Fray Bentos corned beef. I like corned beef, just as it is, my husband loves it in corned beef hash; I’m sure everyone who makes hash has their own recipe, some involving potatoes, some involving onions, some with their own secret family recipe. Corned beef, fray bentos or otherwise wasn’t a frequent feature of our table at home – my dad had virtually lived off it while in the army during the war, and remembered pouring it out of its tin in North Africa, so it wasn’t a favourite of his!

Liebig’s Extract of Meat Company started producing corned beef under the label Fray Bentos in 1873, but for the forty previous years the company was associated with the production of meat extract, in fact probably started the idea of a meat extract. Justus von Liebig who was born in 1803 in Darmstadt was a chemist; he sounds a most extraordinary man, developing chemistry as a modern science, and promoting it in practical areas such as fertiliser and food production, as well as the idea of the connection between research and development, and how to actually teach chemistry. All modern chemists owe him their success. I’m sure my dad didn’t know, but as a scientist and analyst of meats, proteins, lipids, his achievements and discoveries had a direct link to corned beef and the man who initiated the Fray Bentos company with his associate George Christian Giebert.

Returning to Lemco, this meat extract was produced from 1865; Bovril which is more famous was not produced until nearly ten years later. There are other products and companies called lemco these days, for example: