The beef drinks surprised me more than hot squash or Horlicks

When people suggested I try a mug of hot beef stock, I thought they were pranking me. I use stock cubes in cooking all the time, but drinking one like a coffee was a different matter. I went into this hot-drink taste test nervous and expecting some fairly disgusting results.

The surprising part was that the beef drinks were better than I expected. Hot squash was fine, and Horlicks was much less exciting than I’d hoped, but Oxo and Bovril made me admit I might have been wrong. I still wasn’t planning to sit on the couch with a relaxing afternoon mug of beef.

Oxo tasted better than the idea sounded

A member of our community suggested putting a beef Oxo cube in boiling water with a couple of cracks of black pepper. That was how I made mine, although I managed to scatter part of the cube across the counter and onto the floor. Nearly a whole cube made it into the mug.

I called it my mug of gravy, then finally tasted it. It reminded me of a cup of soup or a cup of noodles with everything removed except the broth. The taste wasn’t bad at all. What I struggled with was the concept, because it felt as though I was standing over a pot tasting a spoonful of something I was cooking.

People had told me they drank something like this at football matches. I could imagine being outside for hours, cold and miserable, and finding it warming. At home I’d rather have coffee or tea, or turn the broth into soup with noodles. The noodles are the best part, but the beef drink itself was surprisingly tasty.

Hot squash reminded me of a birthday tea

For the next drink, people had suggested Ribena, but I used Tesco’s own squash instead. The idea was simply to make the squash hot. I mixed mine with hot water, ran out of water partway through and decided it would probably be fine. It was. I was surprised again.

It reminded me of a loose-leaf tea my partner had bought me for my birthday, with blackcurrant and hibiscus. When I’d tried that tea, it had reminded me of hot squash. Now I was having the comparison the other way round, which made this drink a little easier to understand.

I could see the appeal for a child who liked squash and wanted something hot after playing in the snow. For me, juice belongs cold and tea belongs hot, so combining the two was still odd. It was perfectly fine, but I actually preferred the beef drink.

Horlicks needed milk, and I nearly missed that

I’d bought Horlicks without reading the description because I wanted a surprise. I was ready to boil more water when the instructions told me to use hot milk instead. Good thing I checked. I mixed the powder into milk, found it alarmingly chunky and heated it in the microwave. Once the milk was hot, the chunks disappeared.

The taste reminded me of the milk left after you’ve eaten all your cereal, with a grainy or malty flavour. It was the closest of these drinks to hot chocolate, except there was no chocolate. That didn’t sound terrible in my head, but I didn’t really like the taste. It was the one I’d found alongside the tea, coffee and hot chocolate, so I’d hoped this purpose-made drink would be better.

Bovril made me admit I was wrong

I saved Bovril for last because it scared me most. Its jar looked suspiciously like Marmite, which I don’t like despite repeatedly trying to like it. The paste inside didn’t improve my confidence, and measuring a spoonful felt much less straightforward than using a stock cube. At least a cube has an obvious size, unless you squeeze it too hard and send it across the counter.

Once I’d mixed it with hot water and tried it, it wasn’t very different from the Oxo. That was the part I had to admit. I’d liked the taste of the stock-cube drink, and this wasn’t far off it. The sticky brown paste had looked far more threatening than the finished drink tasted.

I still thought of Bovril as a drink for a particular situation. A football match or waiting outside on a cold, miserable Bonfire Night made sense to me. An ordinary afternoon on the couch didn’t. I’d prefer soup with something in it, but I understood the appeal now, and the drink that had worried me most had turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

Watch my hot British drinks taste test.