Marmite (2)

A marmite is a French cooking pot, a big fat round one with a handle on either side originally a stockpot…

Over here in England we automatically think of Marmite a the love-it-or-hate-it savoury spread. I’m on the love it side, I have a preference for dark and handsome, and that sums up Marmite for me! It’s a yeast extract, a by-product from brewing… another good reason for making beer in my opinion! It has a strong, distinctive flavour, and very salty. It is usually spread on bread or toast but can be used in cooking to add a little something to many dishes!

Although discovered by a German chemist, it didn’t appear as we know it until 1902, when the Marmite Food Extract Company was started in Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire. I used to think it was produced by a family called Marmite… but of course it was a family with an ordinary name, the Gilmours.

It has been eaten and enjoyed for over a hundred years, and has always been in a similar shaped pot with a similar label design; it hasn’t really changed although there have been speciality editions, one with champagne, one with Guinness, one with Marston’s Pedigree beer… and the one I’ve used as the featured image which has specks of gold in the spread.