I have never understood why and how people loved to eat Marmite. This despite the fact that my wife, daughter and son all adore it. I am more in line with John Kelley of the Washington Post who writes about " Marmite, an English condiment that is perhaps the foulest compound legally sold for human consumption".
Kelley goes on to describe Marmite, a foodstuff that, like warm beer and rainy summers, informs the English national identity. "Imagine" he continues, " putting hundreds of anchovies in a blender, adding salt and axle grease, pureeing, pouring the contents on an asphalt roofing shingle, baking under a hot sun for several weeks, then scraping off a black, gooey precipitate and eating it. That is Marmite. "
Maggie Hall has even written a book about it titled "The Mish-Mash Dictionary of Marmite: An Anecdotal A-Z of 'Tar-in-a-Jar.' " Under "vitamins," you learn that Marmite is packed with thiamine, riboflavin, niacin and folic acid; under "fishing," that some anglers think it attracts catfish and carp; under "museum," that a Missouri man has a shrine to Marmite in his basement, and under "outer space," that Yorkshire-born NASA astronaut Nicholas Patrick brought Marmite with him as his "comfort food" on a 2006 space shuttle mission. (It would also have been handy for patching damaged thermal tiles.)
"The traditional way to consume Marmite", according to Kelley, " is to butter a piece of toast and then spread a thin layer of the dark goo on it. A very thin layer. One-micron thick, ideally. That's what I tried to do anyway. My toast carefully Marmited, I took a bite and immediately felt as if I'd been hit in the face by an ocean wave, a wave befouled by oil from a sinking tanker, oil that had caused a die-off of marine birds and invertebrates, creatures whose decomposing bodies were adding to the general funkiness of the wave that had found its way inside my mouth. "
And to my general befuddlement, my entire family loves it!
Anil, how wonderful that you picked-up on John Kelly's fun piece in the Washington Post, about my book. And I'm going to take this opportunity to tell your followers that for information about the book go to: Mish-Mash-Marmite.blogspot.com Also search Marmite Maggie...and all sorts of stuff pops up.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile I have to tell you that the book has several entries referring to India. In 1928 Dr Lucy Wills went to Bombay - to research whether diet was a factor in pernicious anaemia. It wasn't until she fed, in sheer exasperation, an ailing monkey some Marmite that she unlocked the secret of what we now know as folic acid. Also Phil Johnson who runs the Spurgeon website (it pays homage to the British Victorian preacher) has pages on the site about Marmite. It's usually the first first thing to come up on a 'Marmite' search. His devotion to Marmite is not explained on the site, but it is in the book. It all goes back to 1984 when he was studying in Bangalore and his hosts fed him Marmite. Makes a very funny story.
All the best, Maggie.
The best 'first' tasting story came from a woman who tried it tentativly, then - before diving into it with relish - declared it 'great'. Telling me this, as I prepared to sign her copy, she admitted she had no sense of smell. And wondered if this had helped her get it down. I could hear the 'hate' camp roaring - 'yes'!
ReplyDeletecouldn't agree more. the time i tried it, it was like someone pulling my toenails out one by one. WHOLE.
ReplyDeletethen, thinking it must be an acquired taste, one that i should try to acquire as an adult, i tried it again. this time all the hair on my head fell off.
who are the people who are weird enough to have such weird taste buds?
Ritu
Yum! Reminds me I havent had the stuff in ages…great on biscuits too.
ReplyDeleteNiloufer
John Kelley's column got a lot of response. Here is a hilarious sampling:
ReplyDelete"The District's Yoma Ullman is also English by origin. "I spent the years until I was 9 in India," she wrote. "Food went bad there very fast indeed. Marmite did not go bad."
The obvious question: How can you tell when Marmite does go bad?
Yoma continued: "Marmite was on my sandwiches for years and years. It is, in fact, the English equivalent of peanut butter. I've been American since 1968 but I still can't eat peanut butter. It sticks to the roof of my mouth and threatens to choke me."
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Yoma, you are obviously eating it upside down. Turn your sandwiches over!
She continued: "My father said that eating Marmite would deprive me of tasting food, the last pleasure of life according to him. It hasn't so far, and I am 73. So, lay off the Marmite. Some of us love it."
Silver Spring's John Rossi is among them. His mother is English, his father American. John wrote: "In our family, it comes down to three of us loving Marmite (Mom, older brother and me) and three hating it (Dad, sister and little brother). That is about how it is in England, too."
After I posted this piece on marmite, I found that the ads on the side of my blogs all shifted to roofing and roofing services!! Is there a connection between marmite and roofing?
ReplyDelete