For most of its history, Marmite came with a metal screw-top lid. The lid was satisfying. It made the right sound when you opened the jar. It had heft. It felt durable, in the way that midcentury British packaging often did, and it suggested that the contents were a serious product.
Marmite Articles
Explore our collection of articles about Marmite, Britain's most divisive spread.
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Lucy Wills, Marmite, and the discovery of folic acid
Lucy Wills was an English physician who graduated from Cambridge in 1928 and went to work at the Haffkine Institute in Bombay in the early 1930s. She was particularly interested in a severe and often fatal anaemia affecting pregnant women in the Bombay textile mills. The condition was puzzling.
Marmite goes to war: the WWII workers' advertising, the Red Cross parcels, and the Burma broth
By 1916, the British Army Medical Corps had a problem. Soldiers in the trenches were developing beriberi, a nerve disease caused by thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency.
Marmite is a French word, and the jar used to be a pot
The pronunciation argument has been running for at least a hundred years. "Mar-meet" is the original French, and is, technically, correct. "Mar-might" is the British naturalisation, and is what almost everyone in Britain actually says. Both are now acceptable.
How Marmite was invented, by a German chemist and a Burton brewery
Justus von Liebig was one of the most important nineteenth-century chemists, a founder of modern organic chemistry, the namesake of the Liebig condenser still found in every undergraduate lab, and a serial inventor of food products.
Guinness Marmite, the limited edition with the Irish stout yeast
Marmite, as anyone who has read [Burton-on-Trent, where the Marmite actually comes from](/articles/marmite-factory-burton-on-trent) will already know, has always sourced its raw material from leftover brewers' yeast.
Burton-on-Trent, where the Marmite actually comes from
The Marmite factory has been on the same Burton-on-Trent site since 1902. It was not, you will be relieved to hear, chosen at random.
Whether you love or hate Marmite is, partly, in your DNA
A few years back, the consumer-genetics company DNAFit ran a study they called the Marmite Gene Project. The aim was to see whether the famous love-it-or-hate-it divide had a genetic basis, beyond cultural exposure and childhood imprinting. The answer, surprisingly, was yes.
Marmite hooch, the prison-cell ferment that briefly became famous
The brewing of alcohol at home requires no licence in the UK for personal consumption. The brewing of alcohol in prison is, however, against prison rules, and this article is not a recommendation to do either, particularly the second. It is a piece of food history. Read on accordingly.
M&S have launched a proper Marmite-cheddar sandwich
M&S have launched a pre-made sandwich in their food-to-go range that pairs Marmite cream cheese with British farmhouse cheddar, on vitamin-D enriched soft white bread. Around four quid.
