Updated October 18, 2026 at 6:00 AM EDT
The sticky, salty, century-old condiment and breakfast spread — Vegemite — is an icon in the Australian breakfast scene. So much so that a convicted killer is suing the state of Victoria for his right to eat the spread in prison.
Vegemite is banned in Victoria's prisons, because the pungent paste apparently can be used to throw off dogs and to brew alcohol, according to news reports. The inmate claims his human rights have been breached, and the case has reached the state's Supreme Court, which has not made an official ruling yet.
For decades, the thick black condiment made from yeast extract has come to be synonymous with Australia. Its intense salty flavor has long been the subject of debate on how generously it should be spread on a slice of toast.
Cyril Callister, a food scientist, invented Vegemite in Melbourne after World War I, when stocks of the imported British yeast spread, Marmite, ran out, explains the inventor's grandson, Jamie Callister.
"You've got to be careful. Too much, if you're a first time user, is not going to end well," Jamie Callister says.
For Jamie, Vegemite brings back memories of his childhood family meals at home.
"Much to mom's horror, she'd make something and dad would be lathering Vegemite underneath it, like some people use tomato sauce," he says. "So, it was the go-to product."
In the 1950s, a TV jingle helped make Vegemite a household staple in Australia. More recently, some restaurant chefs have gone further to experiment by adding it to traditional pasta and curry dishes.
Kiamba Briscoe, a bartender at New Gold Mountain bar in downtown Melbourne, uses the spread to make a surprising cocktail.
"I boil down chardonnay until pretty much all of the alcohol content is gone and then I add a nice scoop of Vegemite into that, until all that melts down into one homogenous mixture," Briscoe says.
Like in a scientific laboratory, butter and other ingredients are cooked, strained, cooled and infused to pour a drink resembling a dirty martini that, its creator says, evokes a familiar morning ritual.
"It tastes like you're eating Vegemite with butter on toast. So, when you drink it you immediately get that yeasty tang of Vegemite."
One for the curious, but perhaps not the faint-hearted, the Vegemite cocktail is not likely to appear at Australian prisons anytime soon.
Dhanika Pineda and Alex Leff adapted this for the web. You can click the blue play button up top to listen to the story.
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