A Marmite sausage, and a panel of butcher-judges who liked it
Morgan’s Country Butchers, based at Waters Tump just outside Newport in Shropshire, have walked away from this year’s National Craft Butchers Awards with two prizes for a Marmite-flavoured pork sausage. The awards were held at Harper Adams University in October.
Two prizes for the same idea is not nothing. The Craft Butchers do not give them out for novelty, they give them out because the panel actually liked the sausage. So someone in that room sat with a forkful, nodded, and ticked the box for both categories.
Why it works (probably)
Pork and yeast extract is not the obvious pairing, but it is not the daft one either. Marmite is, fundamentally, a savoury bomb. A teaspoon does what half a stock cube does. In a sausage mix, where you are trying to bring out the meat and add a small backbone of umami without pushing the seasoning into the foreground, a little Marmite is, in principle, a sensible idea. Whether it works in practice depends on dose, and getting that wrong is the difference between “interesting” and “what is in this”.
Two awards suggests Morgan’s did the maths.
On putting Marmite into things that are not toast
The interesting thing here is not the sausage. The interesting thing is that the food trade is now perfectly willing to put Marmite into product categories that have nothing to do with breakfast. Crisps, cheese, bread, the M&S Marmite sandwich, the Joe & Seph’s popcorn, this sausage. None of these are launches that needed Marmite. Each of them used Marmite because Marmite does a specific thing to other ingredients that you cannot easily get from a bottle of soy sauce or a Knorr cube.
That is a small and genuine compliment to the brand. The chefs and the food technologists are picking it up because it works.
Anyway
Congratulations to Morgan’s. If you are anywhere near Newport, the shop is at Waters Tump. The sausage may or may not still be in production, but if it is, that is the one to ask for.
Source: National Craft Butchers Awards 2025, Harper Adams University.
