A Marmite caramel sauce, in the M&S Christmas catalogue
M&S have done the unthinkable and put Marmite into a Christmas dessert range. Two products, both for the food-to-order list:
- a Caramel Sauce with Marmite, 310g, around £3
- Pecan and Salted Caramel Blondies with Marmite, 185g, around £5
The caramel sauce is the more obvious one, in the sense that salted caramel has been a thing for years and Marmite is, fundamentally, a more interesting source of salt and umami than crystalline sodium chloride. The blondies are the unhinged one. Both are landing on shelves and food-to-order menus around the end of November.
Why the caramel sauce is almost certainly going to work
The reason salted caramel is everywhere is that a small amount of salt makes the sweetness of caramel taste sweeter, by giving the tongue something to push against. Marmite carries salt, but it also carries roasted glutamates, which is what gives mushrooms, parmesan, soy sauce and seaweed their savoury depth. Drop a teaspoon of Marmite into a caramel base, and you get a sauce that reads as salted caramel, but with a longer back-of-the-tongue umami note that ordinary salted caramel does not have.
Restaurant pastry chefs have been doing this quietly for at least a decade. The Marmite-caramel ice cream pairing has done the rounds at every food festival since about 2014. M&S putting it in a jar at three quid is not a brave experiment, it is a delayed catch-up.
Why the blondie is the brave one
A blondie is a vanilla brownie. Sweet, buttery, slightly caramelised at the edges, no chocolate to hide behind. The pecan and salted caramel version is already sitting at the limit of how sweet you would want it. Adding Marmite to that, even in trace amounts, is more ambitious than the sauce, because you can taste it directly rather than as a backnote in something molten.
The bet M&S are making is that the blondie has enough sugar and enough butter that the Marmite reads as depth rather than as Marmite. If they have nailed the dose, this will work. If they have not, the blondie will go down in M&S product-development history alongside the chilli chocolate everyone remembers fondly but nobody actually finished.
I would, frankly, try it.
The food science footnote
Marmite is a fermented yeast extract, full of the same Maillard-reaction compounds that caramel develops when sugar browns. At the molecular level the two products are already cousins. That is the real reason the combination works at all, and the reason M&S can put both into a jar and on a counter and expect the people who buy them to be quietly delighted.
The Hate Party will not be pleased
The Hate Party will, of course, see the words “Marmite” and “caramel sauce” in the same sentence and consider it a hate crime against pudding. They are wrong, but their position is at least internally consistent, and we should respect that.
For the rest of us, this is the most interesting thing M&S have put in the Christmas catalogue for a couple of years. If the sauce shows up in your local branch, get one. Pour it over vanilla ice cream. If you are still hungry, get the blondies too.
Source: M&S Food Christmas 2025 food-to-order range, via the Sun and Scottish Sun coverage.
