Vegemite. A pleasure that needs no hurry

Please come in. Leave the hurry at the door. Nothing here is done abruptly. Warmth first. A slice of bread leaves the toaster hot, taut, fragrant. It gets butter. A lot of butter. We let it soften, glisten and slowly disappear into the pores of the bread. The very sight of it has something soothing. You look and remember that you have a body, and that sometimes it needs very little to feel good. Then Vegemite appears. Dark. Thick. Almost black. It is not applied greedily. Vegemite requires manners. A trace on the knife, a gentle brush across the surface, a thin streak spread over the warm butter. Australians know that the greatest pleasure can be ruined by excess. The tourist often learns this one second after an overly bold first bite. Subtlety is enough. The first taste is salty. Then comes umami, a malty depth, a slight bitterness and the fatty mildness of the butter. The tongue protests for a split second, then becomes curious. Vegemite was born of brewer's yeast, and it became something far greater than a bread spread. It is the taste of an Australian childhood, of home and of national memory. Australian travellers take jars to the other end of the world so that somewhere in London, Tokyo or Warsaw they can open the lid and go home for a few minutes. This is what is most human about food. Not vitamins. Not calories. Not ingredients. Memory. The smell of a kitchen. The warmth of hands. Someone who once made breakfast. A table at which everyone was still present. Taste can touch a place to which reason no longer has the key. Vegemite does not have to be beautiful. It has to be close. You can pair it with cheddar, with avocado, or hide a little in a sauce or a stew, where it works as a discreet umami amplifier. Elegance in its simplest form: bread, butter, a dark streak. And the silence of the first bite. You smile. The shoulders drop a little. The jaw stops clenching. For a moment the world loses its duty to solve all its problems immediately. The happiness of the body is surprisingly generous. It starts on the tongue, spreads across the face, loosens you from within, and after a while turns into happiness of the spirit and the mind. Happy little Vegemite. That is what luxury is. Not to have more. To feel more. ## A spread from a gap in imports The national symbol began with a shortage. After the First World War British Marmite stopped reaching Australia. The entrepreneur Fred Walker reasoned that if the country had breweries, it could have its own spread too. In 1922 he hired a young chemist, Dr Cyril Percy Callister, and gave him a task: make a home-grown equivalent from the yeast left over from beer at the Carlton & United Breweries in Melbourne. For months Callister broke down yeast cells with salt and enzymes, that is he carried out autolysis, and then added celery and onion extracts. In 1923 the first batch came off the line. The name was to be chosen by the nation in a country-wide competition with a prize of 50 pounds. Nobody collected the prize, because the name was pulled from the pool of entries by Walker's daughter. Democracy, family edition. Australians did not rush at the novelty. They were loyal to Marmite. The breakthrough came in the 1930s, when Walker joined forces with the American James Kraft and began adding free jars to processed cheese. Consumer patriotism sometimes has to be given away before it can be sold. In 1939 the spread was endorsed by the British Medical Association as a rich source of B vitamins, and during the Second World War it went into soldiers' rations. The little black jar went to the front and came back a member of the family. The epilogue is economic. For years the brand belonged to American corporations, first Kraft, then Mondelez. In 2017 it was bought back for 460 million dollars by the Australian dairy company Bega Cheese. Australia's black blood returned to its own bloodstream. ## One third, two thirds The newcomer's greatest mistake is to treat Vegemite like Nutella or peanut butter. It ends in shock, a grimace and the conviction that Australians eat machine grease. Yet the rule is simple and strict: hot toast, plenty of butter, which must melt and soak into the bread, and on top a film that is almost transparent. The canonical ratio is at most one third Vegemite to two thirds butter. Tom Hanks found this out. In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, he and his wife ended up in quarantine in a hospital in Queensland, and wishing to show his hosts some affection he posted his breakfast online: toast covered in a dark layer a centimetre thick. Instead of get-well wishes he received thousands of lessons in good manners. The writer Jane Caro reminded him of the canon in a single sentence. The actor thanked her and promised to improve. There is something beautiful about a nation that forgives illness but does not forgive a thick layer. Five years earlier Hugh Jackman had staged an intervention on American television. When Jimmy Fallon confessed that he hated Vegemite, Jackman had a toaster, bread, butter and a jar brought on stage, and made toast according to the golden ratio. Fallon took a bite and changed his mind on air. Culinary diplomacy in its purest form: do not persuade, just spread. Beyond toast, Vegemite lives on buttered crackers, which children squeeze until the spread oozes through the holes as "worms". It pairs with cheddar grilled under the broiler, goes into cheese scrolls in almost every bakery, and cuts through the richness of avocado. In the kitchen it works as a quiet seasoning: a teaspoon in a stew, a gravy or meat pies deepens the umami. The brand has also tried eccentricity. There was a Cadbury chocolate with a caramel-and-Vegemite filling, a beef-and-spread pie, a pizza with a crust stuffed with cheese and Vegemite. The nation swallowed it. Not without debate. ## iSnack 2.0, or the nation as editor In 2009 Kraft released a milder version mixed with cream cheese and asked consumers for a name. More than 48,000 suggestions came in. During the Australian football league grand final the winner was announced: Vegemite iSnack 2.0. Australians found it pretentious, computerish and too American. The internet boiled over. After four days the company apologised, held a new vote, and the product became Cheesybite. The moral is constitutional. Whoever asks the nation for its opinion should be ready to hear it. Especially when breakfast is at stake. ## Contraband, moonshine and legends The little black jar also has a criminal record. In the prisons of Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia it is banned. Two reasons were given. The spread's intense smell was said to mask the scent of drugs from the dogs, and the guards feared that the yeast could be used to distil moonshine. The manufacturer explained many times that the yeast in Vegemite is dead after autolysis and pasteurisation and nothing will ferment from it. The bans remain. One prisoner in Victoria took the matter to court, invoking the right to practise his own culture. It is hard to find better proof that the jar has become part of an identity. In 2006 news went round the world that the United States had banned Vegemite because of folic acid and that customs officers were confiscating jars at airports. Australia was outraged, after which the American authorities stated that there had never been any ban. An urban legend in its purest form. Denmark, on the other hand, really did take the spread off its shelves in 2011, because its 2004 law required a licence for vitamin-fortified food and the manufacturer had not applied for one. The most dramatic chapter was written by the competition. In February 2011 an earthquake in Christchurch damaged the only factory of New Zealand Marmite. Production stopped for more than a year, the shelves emptied, jars went at auction for hundreds of dollars, and the prime minister admitted he was rationing his own supplies. The media called it "Marmageddon". Vegemite tried to step into the gap. New Zealanders preferred to wait. Loyalty has a taste too. ## A passport in a jar Salty yeast spreads divide the world like borders. British Marmite, from 1902, is runnier, stickier and sweeter. New Zealand Marmite contains sugar and caramel. Australian Promite, from the 1950s, is lighter and milder, and Swiss Cenovis, from 1931, reigns in French-speaking Romandy. Vegemite is the thickest, darkest, saltiest and most bitter of them all. It does not court affection. It waits for those who grew up with it. Researchers of eating behaviour, among them Paul Rozin and Michael Siegal, noticed that a liking for Vegemite is linked almost exclusively to a childhood spent in Australia. Whoever did not eat it from an early age usually will not come to like it. It is a rare case in which the tongue betrays citizenship faster than the accent. Pop culture wrote the rest. An advertising jingle from 1954, first on radio and from 1956 on television, written by Alan Weekes, gave Australians the phrase "happy little Vegemite". It entered slang and describes someone pleased with how things have turned out, often with a touch of irony. In their 1981 hit "Down Under", Men at Work told of an encounter in Brussels that ended with a Vegemite sandwich, and that single scene made the spread a symbol of Australian warmth abroad. In 1984 the 228 g jar was the first product in Australia to be scanned at the checkout by barcode. It has kosher and halal certification. It is rich in B vitamins but contains no B12, because brewer's yeast does not produce it. All of this is true, but it is not the facts that make a backpacker pack a jar between the socks. Memory does. And memory, like Vegemite, tastes best spread thin. ## Recipe **Ingredients:** - a slice of toast bread, preferably white or sourdough - real butter (or margarine), in a very generous amount - Vegemite - optional: cheddar cheese **Method:** 1. Toast the slice of bread so that it is freshly browned and hot. 2. Immediately spread on a very generous layer of butter and wait until it has completely melted and soaked into the bread. 3. Over the melted butter spread a microscopic, almost transparent film of Vegemite. Ratio: at most one third Vegemite to two thirds butter. 4. For the cheese version, cover the toast with slices of cheddar and grill until melted.