Food factoid of the week

via the UKMail:

Marmite is....German, and the name is French...

and it is made from beer sludge

Marmite was invented unintentionally by a German chemist, Baron Justus von Liebig (who also invented Oxo), in the late 19th century. He found that brewer’s yeast could be concentrated, bottled and eaten...The raw material — yeast sludge — is a waste product left over from making beer and was readily available from the town’s 30 breweries. 

and where did the name come from:

n the label, which shows a marmite — French for a large covered cooking pot.

marmite: You either love it or hate it.


marmite recipe here.

So marmite comes from Beer: ah, but can marmite be reverse engineered to make beer?

after reports of prisoners making beer from fruit juice and Marmite, scientists experimented to see if this was true (using the Australian version, Vegemite).

alas, they found the microorganisms in the vegemite had been sterilized, but the spread does contain ingredients that help ordinary yeast to make beer.