was invented in France in 1869. At this time, during the crisis which led up to the Franco-Prussian War, butter was scarce and expensive. The Emperor Napoleon III therefore instituted a competition for a cheaper substitute, which was won by a certain Mège Mouriès. His theory was that butter fat was formed in an animal's udder from its own fat and milk. So he mixed oleo, the oil obtained from beef fat, and skimmed milk and water and added a strip of udder to mimic the way in which milk is curdled with a strip of calf's stomach. He found that if he chilled, stirred, and worked the mixture it formed a white, buttery mass with a pearly sheen, for which reason he is said to have named it ‘margarine’ after the Greek word for pearl, margarites.
While Mouriès's biological reasoning was almost completely wrong, he had in fact produced a substance very like butter, although his primitive product lacked flavour and colour. Margarine was an immediate commercial success despite the disdain of those who regarded it as a cheaper and inferior substitute. Many people still prefer butter, but margarine has now come a long way from the early, white, tasteless types. Moreover, the emergence alongside margarine proper of ‘low-fat spreads’ of many kinds has become a major factor in the situation.
In America, margarine has retained the ungainly title oleomargarin(e), often abbreviated to oleo. Artemas Ward (1923) has an interesting passage on this etymological point, offering an interesting alternative to the ‘pearly sheen’ explanation referred to above:
The clumsy title ‘oleomargarin’ was not devised, as one might suspect, by the enemies or defamers of artificial butter. The ‘oleo’ is of course self-explanatory. The ‘margarin’ perpetuates an error of French chemists who long held that olein, ‘margarin’, and stearin (as the glyceryl derivatives of oleic, ‘margaric’, and stearic acids) were the essential constituents of animal fats, and olein and ‘margarin’ of the fat of milk (i.e. butter). The so-called ‘margaric’ acid was in reality a mixture of palmitic and stearic acids, and ‘margarin’ of milk has totally disappeared from the language of the subject. Nor was the title ‘oleomargarin’ first applied to animal-fat butter—it had been given fifteen or sixteen years before to a solid substance obtained yet earlier from olive oil. Thus it happened that the original ‘oleomargarine’ was a fruit product!
Margarine, of the kind intended to resemble butter, can be among the most realistic of ‘imitation’ foods. A good-quality hard margarine spreads, melts, and combines with other ingredients in just the same way as butter. Only a slight deficiency in flavour and a small difference in texture or ‘mouth feel’, discernible when it is eaten as a spread on bread, give it away.
Margarine of this quality is nutritionally much the same as butter. It yields the same amount of food energy. Both are high in saturated fat. Margarine is fortified with added vitamins A and D to bring their levels up to those naturally present in butter.
Hard margarine may be made from varying mixtures of animal and vegetable fats and oils blended with milk; or it may be a purely vegetable product. Kosher margarine is of the second type. Vegetable oils used in hard margarine include palm, groundnut, coconut, safflower, sunflower, cottonseed, and soya bean, the last two being much the most used in American brands. Animal products include lard, oleo oil (made by rendering beef fat), and fish oils of various kinds. Skimmed milk and whey are the other main ingredients, plain water being used instead for purely vegetable brands.
Soft margarine contains more unsaturated oils, so that its melting point is lower and it spreads easily when taken from the refrigerator. It may be deliberately made as high as possible in ‘polyunsaturates’ (oils whose molecules are unsaturated at more than one site: see fats and oils) for those who see a health advantage in this.
The name ‘margarine’ is not used for ‘low-fat spreads’ which have extra water and air whipped into them, thus reducing their fat content; nor for various special products such as those made with olive oil. The range of what might be called ‘butter alternatives’ has widened and the terminology has become more complicated.
The process by which the traditional kind of margarine is made is interesting because it shows how difficult it is to copy a simple, natural food such as butter.
First the oils are degummed by heating them with 5% water to 90 °C (194 °F). Impurities such as carbohydrates, proteins, phospholipids, and resins are hydrated (combined with water) and blended into an oil-insoluble gum which is removed by centrifuging.
The oils are then neutralized to remove free fatty acids which might give unwanted flavours. They are heated in 25-ton batches with caustic soda at 75 to 96 °C (167 to 203 °F) for half an hour, which changes the acids to soap. The soap is washed out with water and the oil subjected to a vacuum to evaporate any water that remains in it.
The next stage is to bleach out any plant pigments—chlorophyll and carotenoids—by adding 1% of fuller's earth, a strongly absorbent powder, and heating the oil to 90 to 110 °C (194 to 230 °F) for a while under vacuum, after which it is filtered.
The oil is then catalytically hydrogenated: that is to say, treated with hydrogen in the presence of nickel as the catalyst to saturate its double and to harden it to a required degree. The process is carried out in a sealed, gas-filled vessel at a high pressure and a temperature of 180 °C (356 °F). It may also be interesterified: a process which rearranges the fat molecules and raises the melting point. Both hydrogenation and interesterification produce side products, so the oil has to be neutralized and bleached again. It is also deodorized by passing superheated steam at 180 °C (356 °F) through it in a very high vacuum to prevent oxidation (chemical reaction with the oxygen in the air, which would produce off flavours.)
The refined oils are then blended. Liquid oils and hard fats are combined in proportions that will give the required solidity. There must be some oils with a melting point below 34 °C (93 °F) so that the margarine will melt in the mouth when eaten as a spread.
Meanwhile, the aqueous phase—the watery part—of the emulsion is being prepared. For animal margarine, this is mostly skimmed milk, some of which is cultured with lactic acid-producing bacteria such as Streptococcus lactis to develop a natural ‘buttery’ flavour. The bacteria convert citrates in the milk to diacetyl, an important element in the flavour of butter and margarine alike. The skimmed milk is pasteurized to remove unwanted bacteria and enzymes, then a small amount is inoculated, kept warm, and allowed to sour. This is used as a starter for a larger batch, until enough milk has been sufficiently flavoured. The soured milk is cooled and blended with plain pasteurized milk. In the case of vegetable margarine using water, diacetyl has to be added later with other flavourings.
Now the oil phase is given vitamins A and D; colour, which may be natural or synthetic annatto or beta carotene; flavourings, including delta lactones, small amounts of butyric and caproic acid, and diacetyl if necessary (all flavourings naturally present in butter); salt; and up to 0.5% of emulsifiers such as lecithin (made from soya beans) and monoglycerides (made from organic acids and glycerol).
Then the oil and aqueous phases are emulsified in a rotator. This is a metal tube chilled by a cooling jacket to −18 °C (0 °F). Inside it metal blades revolve, churning the contents and scraping the walls. As the margarine solidifies it is scraped off by the blades and thrown into a ‘tempering tube’ 18 cm (7″) wide and 3 m (10′) long. It takes two minutes to travel along this tube, during which it is pressed and slightly warmed to consolidate it. Finally, the margarine is extruded and packaged.
Cooking with hard margarine presents few problems. It may be used exactly as butter, and will perform in the same way; although some of the cheaper sorts tend to spatter when used for frying.
Soft margarine is essentially a spread. It is not a substitute for butter or for hard margarine. It contains different proportions of ingredients, and is not good either for frying or as an ingredient in cakes and the like (excepting certain cake recipes formulated specially for it).
Ralph Hancock is an encyclopedist with a special interest in food history and food science.
Ward, Artemas (1923), The Encyclopedia of Food, New York: A. Ward.
