Bully beef

“ We all lay around in any old place, and in any old attitude. I, for one, devoted most of the time during that evening to learning the art of putting my equipment together. The majority of the boys were at the old familiar game, poker.
We had not been on this transport very long when we had our first introduction to bully beef and biscuits. Bully beef is known to civilians the world over as corned beef, and to the new Sammy as "red horse." But even bully beef and biscuits aren't so bad, and our thoughts were not so much on what we were getting to eat as on when we were getting to France. ”

“ To break them it is necessary to use the handle of your entrenching tool or a stone. We have fried, baked, mashed, boiled, toasted, roasted, poached, hashed, devilled them alone and together with bully beef, and we have still to find a way of making them into interesting food. ”

“ A skillful man would so arrange the meat on his spit as to have alternate pieces of fat and of lean, and thus get what we used to call a bout span. [3]
The burghers utilized the flour supplied to them in [Pg 6] making cakes; these they cooked in boiling fat, and called them stormjagers [4] or maagbommen. [5]
Later on, the British, finding that by looting our cattle they could get fresh meat for nothing, were no longer forced to be content with bully-beef. They then, like ourselves, killed oxen and sheep ”

“ These rations are 16 ounces of bully beef, two hardtack biscuits, some tea and sugar in small wax envelopes. Each man must carry his own iron rations at all times and the penalty for eating them without orders is 28 to 90 days, first field punishment ”

“ For example, there was the item of corned beef—familiarly called "bully." It was the pièce de résistance at every meal with the possible exception of breakfast, when there was usually a strip of bacon. Now, one's appetite for "bully" becomes jaded in the course of a few weeks or months. To use the German expression one doesn't eat it gern. But it is not a question of liking it. One must eat it or go hungry. Therefore, said Shorty, save carefully all of your bacon grease, and instead of eating your "bully" cold out of the tin, mix it with bread crumbs and grated cheese and fry it in the grease. ”

“ Before many hours, after taken from the scene of its death, the beef is being sold to the people, who buy it without the least hesitancy or disgust, even boasting that they eat of the bull that killed so many horses, and if it happened to kill a man it is considered an honor to eat of it. This makes an American want little beef, and that little covered with red pepper to kill the taste. When seated opposite the entrance gate one has full view of the butcher at work. The hide is taken off the toro immediately, and it is dissected. ”

“ There is also the loss caused by the warble to the butcher—and through the butcher to the Army Service Corps. The presence of the fly-larva, which is quite a large creature, induces chronic inflammation in the tissues, and a state of things known to the trade as ‘licked beef,’ and unless the meat-salesman cuts away the affected parts the meat is unsaleable in the market, or greatly depreciated in value. ”

“ Perhaps there is no one piece of sausage as susceptible of being made so excellent or so tasteless, it being entirely a matter of what it is made from. The better grades are made from freshly killed bull beef, hashed warm. The process consists in boning bull beef and opening the meats along the seams, so to speak, skinning each bundle of muscle to remove the wrapping and cutting out all ligaments. Fresh pork, preferably, shoulder meat is treated in the same manner. ”

“ The tongues, when dried, are really superior to those of common beeves, and, indeed, the same may be said of the other parts, but there is a better and worse in buffalo-beef, according to the age and sex of the animal. “Fat cow” is a term for the super-excellent, and by “poor bull,” or “old bull,” is meant a very unpalatable article, only to be eaten by the hunter in times of necessity. ”

“ The evidence shows that the poorer classes of beef and pork are used in making sausage, such as trimmings, hearts, ears, cheeks, liver, snouts and tripe, 'and all that kind of things,' but the preferred material is bull meat; that such meat, other than bull meat, is dry and has not the cohesive properties which will unite it when ground or minced into the mass popularly known as 'sausage' and that, for this reason, cornmeal, potato flour and other like substances have come to be used by the trade as 'binders' to give it the desired cohesiveness and appearance. ”

“ There were also 239 rabbits, 111 hares, 75 haunches and quarters of venison, 84 partridges, and four pounds of pickled pork. It will be seen that there was a very great deal of beef and mutton to a very little pickled pork and sausage. All of the game, and most of the poultry seized, was putrid, and of the meat 108,000 pounds were diseased, while 21,000 pounds were stinking; 36,240 pounds of meat being taken from animals that had died of natural causes. ”

“ This aspect of meat, produced by the mode of killing it, has made foreigners entirely dependent on the Japanese butchers in Seoul and elsewhere. The Koreans cut the throat of the animal and insert a peg in the opening. Then the butcher takes a hatchet and beats the animal on the rump until it dies. The process takes about an hour, and the beast suffers agonies of terror and pain before it loses consciousness. Very little blood is lost during the operation; the beef is full of it, and its heavier weight in consequence is to the advantage of the vendor. ”

“ Thus, though numerous households since the War began have temporarily adopted a vegetarian diet, in the majority of cases a line has been drawn at the baby. That is why butchers at present look on babies as their sheet-anchors. It is through them that they keep the toe of their boot inside the family door. The little things they send for them serve as a memento of the old Sunday sirloin, a reminder that while nuts may nourish niggers the Briton's true prerogative is beef.
The greengrocer has given up meat. But he has done more than this. He has done what not even a greengrocer should do. ”

“ Along the sides of the gutters sit the fish and sausage sellers, who may be seen washing their wares in the filthy stream before them. The butchers exhibit good meat, but only beef and mutton, the slaughtering of young beasts being forbidden by law. ”

“ This exception should be duly noted, inasmuch as it is the one redeeming feature of such proceeding that renders it fairly well adapted for the cookery of such [125] meat as cow-heels, sheeps’-trotters, calves’-heads, shins of beef, knuckles of veal, and other viands which consist mainly of membranous, tendinous, or integumentary matter composed of gelatin. To treat the prime parts of good beef or mutton in this manner is to perpetrate a domestic atrocity. ”

“ It is a great mistake for a traveler to kill a patriarchal old bull buffalo, and after attempting to masticate a small portion of him to rise up and declare that buffalo meat is coarse, tough, and dry. A domestic bull of the same age would taste as tough. It is probably only those who have had the bad taste to eat bull-beef who have ever found occasion to asperse the reputation of Bison americanus as a beef animal.
Until people got tired of them, buffalo tongues were in considerable demand, and hundreds, if not even thousands, of barrels of them were shipped east from the buffalo country. ”

“ If the animal’s age is less than 17 to 18 months, the properly prepared cooked meat should be relatively tender. Yearlings just off the cow with perhaps a short period on grass, weighing 400 to 600 pounds, will produce meat low in fat. This meat will be less flavorful than meat from grain-fed animals but should be acceptably tender. Many persons who slaughter on the farm expect the meat from an 800-pound forage-fed steer to taste like U.S. Choice or Prime.
Meat Yield
Well-fed steers from most beef breeds yield a dressed carcass weighing approximately 60 percent of the animal’s live weight. ”

“ It is highly probable that the distribution of fat through the meat, so characteristic of the shorthorn breeds, and which has been brought about only by careful breeding, is not found in either the beef of the buffalo or common range cattle. ”

“ Always be particular not to smoke with too much heat in the smoke house, so that the grease does not melt in the sausage and come through the casing.
CURING BEEF CHEEKS FOR BOLOGNA AND FRANKFURTS
(Copyrighted by B. Heller & Co.; Reprint Forbidden.)
First:—The Cheek Meat should be cut out of the heads as soon as possible after the beef is killed, and the gristle should be cut through lengthwise, two or three times. All the fat can also be trimmed off or left on, just as desired; in a large slaughtering establishment, the fat is worth more in the tank than in the sausage. ”

“ The plan, too, of cutting the loin between the rump and aitch-bone in the hind-quarter, lays open the steak-pieces to better advantage than in the Scotch bullock. Extending the comparison from one part of the carcass to the other, in both methods, it will be seen that the most valuable pieces—the roasting—occupy its upper, and the less valuable—the boiling—its lower part. Every beast, therefore, that lays on beef more upon the upper part of its body is more valuable than one that lays the same quantity of flesh on its lower parts. ”

“ It is no easy trick to teach a man to cut meat properly; butchering is a skilled trade. As soon as it was apparent that the American Expeditionary Forces in France were to be greatly expanded in size, our officers overseas sent requests that several trained and experienced butchery companies be sent over to cut meats properly for the organizations abroad. In order to comply with this request there was added to the curriculum of the quartermaster training camp in Florida a butchery course in the cutting, boning, rolling, and tying of fresh and frozen beef. ”

“ The pot should be filled with cold water, and boil slowly till done, according to the size of the meat, or allow a quarter of an hour for every pound of the meat; quick boiling will make the meat hard and insipid. Be careful that it does not stop boiling, or the meat will be injured; remove the scum frequently. People are not generally aware of the injurious effects 10 from eating the flesh of diseased animals. It has been my practice to choose beef from the whiteness of the fat, and always object to it if a dark shade of yellow; let the fat be clear and thick, and the beef smooth and close ”

“ Lean beef is fattened by larding it, but the skewers are left in and ruin the carver’s knife.... To fetch their price, butchers often hold back meat until it is bad, when they try to sell it rather than cast it to the dogs.... ”

“ After leaving the cowkeeper I had that feeling of revulsion very strongly which all who know and love cows occasionally experience at the very thought of beef. I was for the moment more than tolerant of vegetarianism, and devoutly hoped that for many days to come I should not be sickened with the sight of a sirloin on some hateful board, cold, or smoking hot, bleeding its red juices into the dish when gashed with a knife, as if undergoing a second death. We do not eat negroes, although their pigmented skins, flat feet, and woolly heads proclaim them a different species ”

“ This bull-beef, you may be sure, could not be any thing extraordinary, nor any ways equal to the flesh of such as are tame; especially after it had run so far, and so hard, before it was killed. These wild cattle will give the hunters a chase sometimes of several miles together after they are wounded; which makes the flesh but indifferent meat, especially if it be a bull; but people in want are glad of what comes first to hand; for these wild cattle are a great help to such as live in the remote parts, who, in necessitous times, come here a hunting. ”

“ Whatever theoretical objections may be raised against over-fed cattle, and great as may be the attempts to disparage the mountains of fat,—as highly-fed cattle are sometimes designated,—there is no doubt of the practical fact, that the best butcher cannot sell any thing but the best fatted beef ”

“ The beef given to prisoners was of the third grade—the worst on the market—it is cow or bull beef, never heifer or steer, and often it is rotten, and must be treated chemically before being offered even to prisoners. ”

“ During the sultry summer months, it is difficult to procure meat that is not either tough or tainted. It should, therefore, be well examined when it comes in, and if flies have touched it, the part must be cut off, and the remainder well wiped with a clean cloth dipped in warm water and vinegar. In loins of meat, the long pipe which runs in the cavity of the bone should be taken out, as it is apt to taint, as also the kernels of beef. Rumps and aitch-bones of beef, should not be purchased when bruised. ”

“ Cow beef is much the same to look at as ox beef, though being older it is both coarser in the grain and tougher; bull beef, which is never seen however, in a first class butcher's may be recognized by the coarseness and dark color of the flesh, and also by a strong and almost rank smell. ”

“ If young and freshly killed, the lean of ox-beef will be smoothly grained, and of a fine, healthy, carnation-red, the fat rather white than yellow, and the suet white and firm. Heifer-beef is more 185closely grained, and rather less bright of colour, the bones are considerably smaller, and the fat of a purer white.
Of bull-beef we only speak to warn our readers that it is of all meat the coarsest and the most rank in flavour. It may be known by its dark hue, its close tough fibre, and the scanty proportion, bad appearance, and strong odour of its fat. ”