G'day Chicken Charlie,

You're right about the French introducing boiled beef as a new ration ... but a century too late in your dates. The development of canning, as a preserving method, was the main outcome of initiatives by Napoleon (Remember - "An army marches on its stomach"?).

Without tracking down the references, I remember it as being introduced in 1813 (actually, I just determined the French patent for the tin can was issued in 1810)... and the British Admiralty got into the act by the 1820s ... and only invented the can-opener in the 1830s - until then you opened the can with a hammer and chisel!

The French canned product was (~) boeuf bouilli (give or take a dipthong that's not in the ASCII set) and that was quickly rendered, by the Anglophones, as "bully beef".

John iB and Gary T: I remember my grandfather handing on his WW II Australian Army "housewife" to me in 1958 (~) for running repairs to uniform.

Regards,

Bob Bolton