04 Aug Marmite vs. The Blob
To those who know me or have wasted any of their precious time perusing these virtual pages, it is no secret that I am an unrepentant Anglophile. This goes so far back and is rooted so deeply in my psyche that I have no precise notion of how it got there, other than it probably has something to do with having watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 (my mother thought they were ‘cute’). I have visited London on a couple of occasions and have traveled by rail from the capital up to Edinburgh and back, but my firsthand experience of Great Britain is woefully limited. Despite being fully aware that it’s completely absurd, my mind has long harbored a ridiculously romanticized fantasy version of Blighty in which everyone outside of London lives in a picturesque village or small town equipped with a cozy pub and a few small but well-stocked family-owned shops run by stout, apple-cheeked men and women of jolly disposition. The general populace reside, one and all, in split-timber houses with thatched roofs and well-tended gardens. No one locks their doors and everyone gathers on the village green to participate in a calendar of spirited proto-pagan rituals that chart the course of the seasons. Having watched most of the seemingly endless episodes of Midsomer Murders I am also well advised that most, if not all, of these charming hamlets harbor a few scheming murderers patiently awaiting their moment of ascendancy. Somehow or other, that only adds to the appeal.
The many cultural quirks of our cousins ‘cross the Briny—the whole driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road thing, the oddball pronunciations, the bad teeth, the football hooliganism—I have accepted as charming eccentricities. One indulges them with a shrug and a ‘whaddya gonna do?’-type sigh. Some of the culinary idiosyncrasies are also baffling: Room temperature beer, tasteless cucumber sandwiches, kippers, scotch eggs, blood pudding (which, of course, is not actually pudding at all), haggis, bubble and squeak, etc etc. Intriguing, but not exactly appetizing. I’ll have my beer cold, thank you very much, and hold the haggis while you’re at it.
The endless guzzling of tea also confounds me. To my reasoning, tea is what you drink only when there’s no coffee available. For the Brits, tea is the answer to everything. The Luftwaffe is bombing London into a pulverized pile of rubble? Put the kettle on. Jane Marple has just shown up and someone has (coincidentally) whacked the vicar? Put the kettle on. Boris Johnson and his eggbeater moptop have booted the EU and are running the UK straight into the crapper? Put the kettle on. Prince Harry has turned his back on the Royals and run off to Cali to breed with an American television actress and air the family’s dirty laundry on Netflix? Put the kettle on. Whatever works, I guess.
One British food item that I have often wondered about is Marmite. I’ve known about it for a long time but have no clear concept of the stuff. I know it has something to do with yeast, but what the hell is it, exactly? What do you do with it? What does it taste like? Where do you get it?
Well, as it turns out, if you live this side of the pond you get it where you get everything else: from Amazon. I can’t recall what inspired me to do so, but I eventually searched and located it there in the Bezos-verse and added it to the two or three dozen items in the ‘Saved for Later’ backwater of my online shopping cart. There it languished for two-plus years. Every time I would scroll through the assortment of things desired but not needed or desired but not yet afforded, there it was—beckoning to me in its stubby little brown bottle with the yellow cap and bold red, yellow, green and white label. Yeast extract, rich in B vitamins (pronounced with a soft ‘i’, as the Brits are wont to do), produced by Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen by Unilever UK! My cursor lingered over the ‘Move to Cart’ button on numerous occasions, but, for whatever reason, I hesitated. I did not commit.
Until now. A couple of weeks ago I visited an art gallery owned by an acquaintance of mine who is of the expat British persuasion. I noticed that in her kitchen/cubby off to the side of the exhibition space she had a stash of Marmite. The gallery owner in question is mother to a five-ish year-old child whose tricycle was also stashed in the cubby. I figured to myself, ‘Self, if this worldly, intelligent and devoted mother would allow her precious progeny to consume Marmite, well, how bad can it be?’ This proved to be the tipping point: I clicked on the ‘Move to Cart’ button and ordered myself up a 4.4 ounce bottle of Marmite, courtesy of Mssr. Jeff B. The deed was finally done. The Queen, God rest her royal soul, would be proud of me.
A few days ago the shipment arrived. Now in person, the bottle of Marmite possesses a certain undeniable gravitas. Yes, it is small, but it has heft. The bottle is made from glass, not plastic. It fits nicely in the hand and feels like it would be good for throwing—though hopefully it won’t come to that.
I unscrew the cap. The contents look dense, deep brown in color. Too thick to pour? I tilt the bottle to judge its viscosity—yes, too thick to pour, at least at room temperature and at 7,300 feet elevation. Smell? Yes, it has an oddly distinct smell. What kind of smell is it? I cannot say. I guess it smells like… Marmite.
Okay, so the stuff won’t exit the bottle on its own—it will need to be encouraged. What utensil would be best? I decide upon a teaspoon. I understand that Marmite is a spread—the label specifies ‘Vegan Spread.’ This brings to mind young men on the subway, smelling of turnips, heedlessly taking up three seats in their baggy jeans and fair trade vegan boots as they search routes to the nearest farmer’s market on their cell phones.
So, Marmite being a spread, what then shall I spread it upon? Apparently, it is traditionally applied to buttered toast, but I have no toast. I do have a box of Carr’s Table Water. They’ve been cranking Carr’s out of Carlisle, England, since 1831 and, despite the lack of a royal commission, I expect that it will suffice.
In goes my teaspoon. The stuff is extremely gooey—tiny filaments of Marmite goo trail behind as I extract a small amount. I spread a thin layer on my Carr’s cracker and here goes…
Wow. Just… wow.
This stuff is… pretty disgusting. Not quite at the level of ‘Sweet Baby Jesus, this is a HORRIBLE mistake!’, spit it out immediately and rinse with a bracing splash of battery acid, but it’s definitely trending towards the gag-worthy.
I solider on, chew it down. It’s still disgusting. I sit down to contemplate my first impressions of Marmite and a certain aftertaste slowly begins to pervade my palette. The aftertaste is not as jarring as the initial assault, but I still can’t describe it as pleasurable.
The notion forms that this is what it might taste like to munch down a dollop of the extra-terrestrial whatever-it-was from the classic sci fi movie The Blob: The color and consistency are remarkably similar. I wonder, Would Steve McQueen like Marmite? He was a Marine—he was tough, he could take it. But I definitely think he’d want to rinse before laying a lip-lock on Ali McGraw after munching some of this stuff.
Okay—this is a serious investigation. One dose will definitely not be sufficient to formulate an informed opinion. Convulsions have not set in, no projectile vomiting (yet): I’ll go again.
Upon close examination, in addition to the Blob, Marmite looks very much like chocolate fudge topping for an ice cream sundae, but it’s like the exact opposite of that. This is like anti-matter to chocolate fudge topping’s matter. Mix the two together and a portal to an alternate universe might open up—perhaps worthy of further investigation, depending on what happens in November.
The second dose offers no elaboration on the first. It’s still horrid, though at least I knew what to expect this time around. Try as I might, I truly can’t think of anything to compare Marmite to, so I guess the most accurate statement would be that Marmite tastes like… Marmite. The label on the back of the bottle proclaims ‘Wake up your taste buds… Put the Oomph in your breakfast’! Well, my tastebuds are definitely awake—no doubt about that—but I don’t think I could handle Marmite first thing in the morning. If I knew that Marmite was lying in wait for me I might have to climb out the bedroom window in order to avoid the kitchen altogether.
The folks at Unilever are well aware of the wildly disparate opinions elicited by their signature product. The ‘Marmite effect’ has become somewhat of a cultural meme employed to describe any phenomenon that elicits highly polarized responses. Unilever has even employed this dichotomy in their marketing campaigns, with advertising proclaiming: ‘Love it or hate it!’ Either way, Marmite is consumed all over the planet in one variant or another, though primarily in the nations of the British Commonwealth.
Interestingly, despite its strong associations with Britishness, Marmite was invented by a German scientist in 1902. That sounds about right.
Marmite would seem to exemplify the concept of an ‘acquired taste.’ It’s probably one of those things like the early films of Adam Sandler or Barry Manilow’s music that one needs to be inoculated with at a very early age in order to withstand without ill effect later in life. Middle age might be too late to try and establish a mutually beneficial relationship with Marmite, but I will commit to you Gentle Reader(s): I’m not giving up! I shall continue on with my quest to come to a rapprochement with this storied yeast extract vegan spread. If it necessitates going to such extremes as the acquisition of buttered toast, then, by Jove, buttered toast it shall be! I spent $7.70 on this stuff—I have my investment to protect!
And if it might seem that this post is naught but a shameless ploy upon the part of Your Humble Narrator to try and court more readers from fair Albion and across the Commonwealth, well—guilty as charged. Cheers, mates!
