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Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

Not the same drink at all, but :

As a child i read the James Herriot memoirs (all things bright and beautiful, etc..), in which he waxes rhapsodic about the restorative powers and deliciousness of Bovril.

I had no idea what it was, so I was free to invent my own idea of what it might taste like, or be, or consist of.

When i discovered he was so happy about diluted beef stock, i was more than a little let down.

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The bovril name is interesting. It's a mix of Bos (ox) and a super intelligent alien race from science fiction stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovril

Beef tea isn't to everyone's taste. I wonder how they'd react if given the chevril variant?

Also, Bovril is one of the only products to have the Pope in its marketing.

"One of the only" ... sneaky!

Went to a football match as a lad and wasn't sure what Bovril was, but ordered one anyway.

Imagine my reaction when what I thought was hot chocolate, was instead hot beef extract.

Billy Connolly had a great bit about Bovril, football and violence.

https://youtu.be/-JjVg0Sbsh4

Yeah. I had a real hard time conceiving of it as something that doesn't involve malt powder.

Not even a drink, but: reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a child led me down a similar path with regard to Turkish Delight.

That's such a common one! It's even worse that there's a chocolate bar in the UK called "Turkish Delight" which is nothing like the proper "Lokum". It's not very pleasant :)

Turkish delight (not Cadbury's chocolate bar) is delicious.

The chocolate bar is just crap mass-produced Turkish delight wrapped in chocolate. I agree it's not very pleasant, but I don't know what else one could expect.

It's not that real-world Turkish delight is bad, per se, so much as that Lewis makes it sound so life-changingly incredible that the real-world version is bound to disappoint by comparison.

On the one hand, it was mind-numbingly delicious because of the White Witch's magic making it incredibly addictive, rather than simply the virtue of being Turkish delight.

But why the choice of Turkish delight? A combination of status-signalling and unavailability [1] (post-WW2 sugar-rationing was still in effect when the book was written).

[1] http://www.tor.com/2016/08/08/why-was-turkish-delight-the-ul...

Don't forget that CS Lewis was writing for a UK audience that still had rationing for sweets when published.

Turkish Delight was /Is a common UK Christmas time treat.

Yep I've since had it (in Istanbul, no less) and it is very nice

It's WAYYYY too sweet.

When my wife's parents come visit us from Moldova they usually bring over a box of Turkish Delight; it's always unveiled with cries of "Turkish Delight for the young prince! Ha ha ha!"

Same here with Harry Potter in regards to stale bread and cheese.

Where is that in Harry Potter?

(I'm British, so if it's something completely normal in Britain I might not have noticed. But I don't eat stale bread...)

I have a strong memory of Harry being banished to his room and he only manages to get some stale bread and cheese. I can't remember which book it was, but thinking maybe Chamber of Secrets (or at least one of the first three). I remember at the time going and getting some stale bread and cheese. (it wasn't necessarily presented as a good thing in the book, but somehow I found it appealing).

I mean, fresh bread and cheese is delicious. Stale bread, not so much. You're aware that stale just means old?

Yes. I found it appealing because I identified with Harry and wanted to share an experience with him. Why you hate on me.

Because Harry was forced into eating that by the Dursleys! Why would you want to eat something Harry didn't even want to eat? If you had an obsession with treacle or coffee cake or one of the many other delights Harry enjoyed at Hogwarts are at the Weasley's, I'd understand your motives better!

I definitely wanted the other things too, such as the moving chocolate frogs, but sadly they aren't as available as stale bread and cheese.

People are still trying to sell that idea, only now they've packaged it as 'bone broth'.

Snark aside, though, I could drink salty, savoury hot drinks all day long.

Now that science is backing benefits from fasting, and that bone soup are recommended for long fasts (> 48 hours), they should advertise towards that market!

As an aside, I strongly recommend Bovril as a "post" hangover and fasting aid. Add jalapeno and pepper or spicy sauce to it and it has a lot of filling properties and the salt restores what has been lost during drinking. Your milage may vary.

It's a preferable alternative to sugar, sure, but the salt content could be a concern. Wouldn't be a bad option if the other option is soda.

sorry to use this forum, but i don't know how to send a message to you directly. two days ago a discussion appeared [0] that quoted your JJ thomson quote from a previous comment [1], but the poster didn't know where the original quote comes from. I'm also curious about the source of the wonderful quote. Would you mind responding to the comment [2] with the attribution if you have time?

Thanks!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12803770 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14021885 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14022158

Home-made beef stock is actually INCREDIBLY nutritious, especially if it is made with the bones. There's a huge trend of bone broth suppliers cropping up in New York.

If it's some kind of mass produced stock though, it's probably not better than salt water.

> When i discovered he was so happy about diluted beef stock, i was more than a little let down.

It's basically marmite for drinking.

Yeah I know I'm being pedantic here but Marmite is yeast extract while Bovril is beef.

It's an important point for vegetarians! But the taste is very similar.

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