Sure enough, there's a FAQ available on this... er... quintessential Continental fermented food product.

> > Marmite?
> > "Drink a cup of marmite while you eat your tea."

Erm. I can't believe a James Kew (of the Marmite FAQ) publically admitted that he likes to "pour boiling water into a near-empty jar and drink the jar clean"...


> > Marmite? I wonder if it's like anthercite?
> > Howard
>
> Marmite is a yeast spread which looks, smells ans tastes exactly like molten tar. You spread it on toast and then get it stuck to the roof of your mouth.
>
> Their slogan is "You either love it or hate it". I have to go for the latter option
>
> Chr"Insert quote here"ico

I wouldn't quite describe Marmite in terms of anthracite coal/roof tar analogies. It LOOKS like road tar, but doesn't quite taste like rotten eggs. (Then again, Jenny once described another much-maligned product -- Moxie soda -- as "the amazing drink from Maine that tastes like cough syrup and motor oil," so we're perfectly in keeping with using excessive hyperbole here :-).

The closest flavour comparison to Marmite that I can think of is to swallow a spoonful of concentrated 'Bovril' beef extract. Or take an Oxo beef cube or a Knorr cow cube, crush it well in half a teaspoon of water, and spread this on a hard cracker. Enjoy. Er.

Basically, Marmite is made from the Brewers' yeast SLUDGE at the bottom of the vat once the beer has been decanted. Blame the Germans for coming up with the idea that this sludge could be made into a nutritious meaty-tasting "protein-rich paste". Actually, I don't know which is the worse of the two evils -- beer itself, which looks and tastes like *****, which should be no surprise since after all it's yeast **** (Why would anyone want to drink something that yeast *excretes* as a waste?) -- versus the Brewers' yeast leaven itself, which is the dead yeast corpses gathered up and made into a tasty, rancid mouth-watering commercial food product. Yum, right?

The Marmite makers just add salt (quite a bit of it) and spices and caramel to the sludge to jazz it up into a gooey spread. My Dave claims that when he was growing up in the 70's, he was forced to eat a homemade Marmite version they called 'gorp glop' which was recycled from homemade brewed-beer sludge. His parents added honey instead of salt, but they couldn't quite cover up that strong rancid yeasty essence. He says he's been 'scarred' for life by this.

Wolf "Quote from FAQ: 'In England, pretzel-like morsels and other boxed fast-food snacks are available with Marmite flavouring. Fans of Mr Bean will remember an episode where he made hors d'oeuvres for a party by spreading Marmite on twigs cut from a tree outside his kitchen window.' Haaaa" spirit