Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. meat, esp. beef.

1579		S. Gosson An Apologie of the School of Abuse (1868) 64: They haue eaten bulbief.
1607		Rowlands Diogenes Lanthorne 8: How lookes yonder fellow? what’s the matter with him trow? has a eaten Bul-beefe? there’s a lofty slave indeede, hee’s in the altitudes.
1632		J. Vicars [trans.] XII Aeneids of Virgil 230: And busily brought in their bull-beef drest, / Baskets of vvell bak'd bread, vvine of the best.
1650		J. Comenius The Bohemian Persecution 199: [T]he sinner, looking (as we use to say) as if he had eaten Bull-beef.
1664		E. Maynwaringe Tutela sanitatis sive Vita protracta 48: Abstain from Venison, Bull-beef or Ox, hanged Beef or long salted, Goats-flesh, Hare, Bacon, Goose, Duck, Swan [etc].
1860		N.E. Police Gaz. (Boston, MA) 18 Aug. 8/3: That miserable, round-headed, bull beef selling Paddy.
1888		J. Ashton Modern Street Ballads 61: For soon he will his trial take, / And hard bull-beef be munching [F&H].

2. an arrogant, self-important person; thus phr. look/talk as big as bull beef.

1624		Middleton Game at Chess IV iv: If Bishop Bull-beef be not snapped next bout As the game stands, I’ll never trust art more.
1678		J. Ray Proverbs 228: To look as big as if he had eaten bull-beef.
1697		S. Penton The guardian’s instruction 57: Coming Home, they talk as big as Bull-Beef of each Man they Heard: Though if you ask the very Text, (Alas!) He Talked so low they could not remember that.
1712		Cervantes Don Quixote [trans.] 679: You may go, and be a Governour, or an Islander, and look as big as Bull-Beef an you will; but by my Grand-mother's Daughter, neither I nor my Girl will budge a Foot from our Thatch’d House.
1785		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘Lyric Odes’ Works (1794) I 90: Yet thou mayest bluster like bull-beef so big.
1823		‘Jon Bee’ A Dict. of the Turf, The Ring, The Chase, etc. 19: Bull-beef he is such who, puffed up by some office, or by riches, gets meaty about the eyes and overlooks old friends: usually adopted by Parish-clerks, Beadles, Public-house men, and fellows of low origin.
1834		‘Jack Downing’ Andrew Jackson 121: As bluf [sic] as bull-beef.