Also charquè. [Quichua (Peruvian) ccharqui dried slice of flesh or hung beef. The corruption jerkin occurs in Captain J. Smith a. 1612, and jerk vb. in Anson a. 1748.]
Beef prepared for keeping by cutting into thin slices and drying in the wind and sun; ‘jerked’ beef (the latter being a corruption of this word).
1760–72. trans. Juan & Ulloa’s Voy., II. VIII. ix. 271. [Chili] … supplies [Peru] with wheat … besides sole leather … Grassa, Charqui, and neat tongues.
1845. Darwin, Voy. Nat., xii. (1852), 260. The miners … are allowed a little charqui.
1847. Prescott, Peru, I. v. 139 (Skeat). The male deer and some of the coarser kind of the Peruvian sheep were slaughtered;… and their flesh, cut into thin slices, was distributed among the people, who converted it into charqui.
1871. Gd. Words, 716/2. Cattle…, the flesh of which is converted into charquè, better known as jerked beef.
attrib. 1865. Daily Tel., 21 Nov., 7/2. An unlucky prejudice against their meat in the dry or charqui state.
Hence Charqued a., ‘jerked.’
1821. Monthly Rev., XCVI. 87. Charqued beef is, in this district, a great article of exportation.
