Marmite Articles

Explore our collection of articles about Marmite, Britain's most divisive spread.

Showing articles tagged with: johnlawsonjohnston | View all articles

Post Icon

What is Bovril, and what is actually in it?

Bovril is a beef and yeast extract paste: 50 per cent beef broth, 27 per cent yeast extract, which makes it a quarter of the way to being Marmite. It was invented in the 1870s by a Scottish butcher in Canada to fill Napoleon III's order for a million cans of beef, was originally called Johnston's Fluid Beef, and takes its name from the Latin for ox plus a fictional energy source from an 1871 science-fiction novel.

Read more »