Margarine was created on July 15, 1869 by the French Province chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès. He invented it in response to a commission by the Emperor Louis Napoleon III for the production of a cooking fat for the French navy that would be cheap and would keep well. To formulate his entry, Mège-Mouriès used a fatty acid component margaric acid, hence its name – margarine. He added skimmed milk and water and a strip of udder to mimic the way butter fat forms in a calf's udder.
Margaric acid was isolated by the Frenchman Michael Chevreul in 1813 and named because of the lustrous pearly drops that reminded him of the Greek word for pearl, "margarites".
Two years after Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès created margarine, he sold the patent to Antoon Jurgens a company based in Oss, Netherlands . In 1888, Samuel van den Bergh, also from Oss, opened his margarine factory in Kleve. The Jurgens and Van den Berghs extended their margarine products all over the world and these two companies merged in 1927 to form Margarine Unie. Unilever was founded on September 2, 1929, by the merger Margarine Unie and Lever Brothers. Their notable brands included Flora and Stork.
Flora was originally named after the wife of one of Unilever's marketing directors, "Louis Flora Catlow". She died on June 24, 2009.
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Margaric acid was isolated by the Frenchman Michael Chevreul in 1813 and named because of the lustrous pearly drops that reminded him of the Greek word for pearl, "margarites".
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| Newspaper ad for the oleomargarine product, 1919 |
Two years after Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès created margarine, he sold the patent to Antoon Jurgens a company based in Oss, Netherlands . In 1888, Samuel van den Bergh, also from Oss, opened his margarine factory in Kleve. The Jurgens and Van den Berghs extended their margarine products all over the world and these two companies merged in 1927 to form Margarine Unie. Unilever was founded on September 2, 1929, by the merger Margarine Unie and Lever Brothers. Their notable brands included Flora and Stork.
Flora was originally named after the wife of one of Unilever's marketing directors, "Louis Flora Catlow". She died on June 24, 2009.
During the 1930's and 40's margarine in Germany, was produced synthetically from coal, providing up to 700 calories of nutrition per day.
Children growing up during the Second World War were prone to catching rickets. Margarine was fortified with vitamin D during this period to help prevent the disease.
During the famous Wisconsin senatorial taste test of 1955, blindfolded senators were challenged to tell the difference between butter and margarine. None of them were fooled–except for the anti-margarine Senator Gordon Roselip who incorrectly identified margarine as butter. His wife later confessed that worried about her husband’s heart, she had for years been sneakily substituting yellow margarine for butter at the Senator’s dinner table.
Colloquially in the US, the term margarine is used to describe "non-dairy spreads" like Country Crock with varying amounts of fat content.
The J.H. Filbert company, based in Baltimore, Maryland, developed the vegetable oil and cream spread I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! It was introduced into the United States in 1981 and in the United Kingdom and Canada ten years later.
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The first Benecol product was a spread that was brought to the market in Finland in 1995.
A consumer packaged goods company Upfield was spun off from Unilever and purchased by investment firm KKR in 2018. Upfield's notable brands include Flora, Stork, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and Becel.
Source Food For Thought by Ed Pearce
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