Marmite is the most British thing in the cupboard, and the invention behind it is not British at all. The discovery that brewer's yeast could be turned into an edible savoury extract was made by a German chemist, Justus von Liebig. Britain did not invent Marmite. It commercialised someone else's idea, brilliantly, in 1902.
Marmite Articles
Explore our collection of articles about Marmite, Britain's most divisive spread.
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Why is Marmite called Marmite? The French pot on the label
Marmite is named after the picture on its own label. A marmite is a French cooking pot, and the spread was first sold in little earthenware versions of one in 1902. The pot stayed on the jar long after the jar stopped being a pot. And the French word itself has a much stranger past: it once meant a hypocrite.
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