Wonderful read: [enjoyment.independent.co.uk]

To its detractors – and there are many – it’s the brand that refuses to die. An anachronism. An unwelcome, unappetising reminder of wartime austerity. Designed to be spread thinly on slices of wholesome, hard-earned bread, it evokes the pre-consumer age, when larders were bare and housewives had to make a little go a very long way.

Yet the announcement that Marmite is to be repackaged in a squeezy bottle for the 21st century is a graphic demonstration of the role of food in society’s collective memory- and our continuing appetite for the Foods That Made Britain Great.

The editor of The Grocer, Julian Hunt, says products that refuse to die are called “orphan brands” by marketing people. “These are the smaller, older brands that big multinationals sell off because they no longer fit. Things like Vim, Ambrosia, Harmony hairspray and Bird’s custard. Certain specialised companies are adept at buying these brands up and keeping them alive.

[…]

BISTO

Bisto gravy powder, in the same brown pack as 70 years ago (minus the cartoon urchin), is one of those brands that should, surely, be dead. In fact, 18,000 tons of the stuff – a billion servings – are sold each year, and consumption is rising by 5 per cent annually. Made by Centura, a Surrey-based part of the foods corporation RHM, Bisto is the ultimate triumph of retro style over content; it consists of potato starch, salt, wheat starch, colour, dried yeast, onion powder and that’s it. It is, essentially, edible brown.

Shockingly, the instructions are in French. Does French cuisine have a dirty little secret? But, as Borkowski PR (drafted in last October to “do a Horlicks” on the brand) says, the explanation is that it’s Belgium that loves Bisto. And Belgians pride themselves on being perverse.