Meat extract

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Meat extract" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Meat extract is highly concentrated meat stock, usually made from beef or chicken. It is used to add meat flavor in cooking, and to make broth for soups and other liquid-based foods.

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 the nutritional value of a meat is lost by boiling. 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.^[1] 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.^{[citation needed]}