Wake Up and Smell the Marmite?

Whether you love it or hate it, everyone recognises that pungent and distinctive smell of Marmite. But how exactly would you describe it to someone, other than saying, “it smells… like Marmite”?

We usually attempt to describe a smell with a series of similes. You might say that Marmite smells a little salty, or a little bit like meat. But your description is never quite right. It seems impossible to describe scent with words alone.

Well, now you can describe exactly what it’s like, thanks to the work of scientist Renée Webster. Webster has successfully broken down the unique odour of Vegemite (the Australian equivalent to Marmite) into the chemical constituents that it is made up of. And the results are fascinating! With nearly 40 different constituents identified, it turns out that the yeasty brown spread is actually quite rich and complex. Individual aromas include cocoa, rose, wood, wax and ... ‘old-person smell’. Yuck!

Making sense of scents

So how do you break down a smell? It turns out that every particular scent is made up of a series of volatile chemicals. These are chemicals that turn into vapour at normal room temperature. Once they have evaporated into the air, they can easily be breathed in through the nose.

So how did Webster analyse the Vegemite? Firstly, she extracted the aroma chemicals using solid phase microextraction (SPME). Gas chromatography (GC) is used to separate the aroma into its component parts and the detector used was a mass spectrometer (MS). The result was a long list of various aromas, some of which would certainly come as a bit of a surprise. While some of the individual scents identified might seem a little unlikely, such as floral, fruity or citrus smells, this doesn’t describe the whole picture.

Some of the compounds found might not be present in large enough amounts for them to actually be detected as a smell. In other cases, different combinations of compounds might smell quite different to their individual parts. And like many things in life, how each compound smells might vary between person to person.

Of course, some of the aromas identified by Webster won’t surprise lovers of the classic spread. These include sulfurol and niacinamide. Sulfurol is described as having a meaty, brothy smell – something that will be familiar to anyone who has ever tried the spread. And niacinamide is actually a form of vitamin B – good news for anyone looking for a bit of a boost!

It doesn’t end here!

If you’re amazed by these findings, you might also be surprised to find it can also determine a chilli’s heat, analyse space dust and even find out if Neanderthals eat vegetables. Wow!

If you’d like to read the original write-up of the analysis you can find them a sample preparation and aroma sampling, separation of vegemite aroma chemicals by gas chromatography and data analysis and interpretation.

Image Source: Marmite

Data Source:

This story originated from the work of Aroma analysis of Vegemite produced by Renée Webster, an analytical chemist based in Australia. The original data can be found here>>
Chromatography Today produced this story based on the content located on these sites. Thank you Renée and our aplologies this was not refrenced corectly at the time the content was published on our website.

http://lostinscientia.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/
http://lostinscientia.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/
http://lostinscientia.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/