Mege’s margarine: minced pig’s stomach and cow’s udder

Press, 10 December 1982, Page 17

Mege’s margarine: minced pig’s stomach and cow’s udder

By

YVONNE EVANS

Customers complaining about our present oily, yellow butter may consider themselves lucky that they were not around in 1869 when" the French scientist, Mege-Mouries, invented margarine.

In his attempts to imitate the process of a cow making milk, converting body-fat into milk-fat, Mege used the waste products of slaughterhouses: bits and pieces of dead animals such as minced-up stomachs of pigs or sheep and a little mashedup cow’s udder. He reasoned that the gastric and pancreatic juices in the animal stomach would help break down the hard tallow (so it was softer and more digestible), and that something in the udder must be essential to buttermaking. First, he took some fresh tallow, mixed it with water, and added minced pig’s stomach. Next, he heated the mixture until the fat separated out and hardened into a course grainy mass, which was then squeezed in a press.

Two fats resulted: one, hard and white, which he

called oleostearine; the other soft, and pale yellow, w'hich he named oleo-margarine.

This new soft fat was mixed with milk and water, bicarbonate of soda, and mashed-up cow’s udder. The result was churned at the body temperature of the cow. Three hours later, ice-cold water was thrown into the churn to solidify the mixture, which was then kneaded and salted.

Mege’s “butter” was a crude product compared with today’s margarine, and was simply the softer part of beef fat mixed with milk for flavour. But this method of emulsifying fat with milk remains in modern margarine manufacture.

As the pioneer of a butter substitute, Mege received a large prize offered in 1866 by Napoleon 111, Emperor of France, for the invention of a food “as nutritious, as stable, and as palatable as butter.”

In the mid-nineteenth century, with Europe’s rapidly-

growing industrial population, the butter price had risen enormously. Supplies of butter were dwindling as more and more people were living in towns, away from farms and home-grown food. Napoleon knew that what people ate affected their ability to work — and to fight.

This was the time of the Franco-Prussian war and the siege of Paris. And so, the invention of some alternative to butter became a matter of urgency.

Mege said that his new product was a “variety of true butter taken at its source.” He patented it in 1874, selling the rights to manufacture it all over Europe and in America. Although the margarine of Mege’s day would now be considered almost inedible, such was the hunger for fat that it rapidly gained favour

and sold well, to the poor. But it was not until the great butter shortage of the-First World War that margarine became a common and familiar food. ■ At first, it did not compete with butter because the workers could not afford butter anyway. As a result, margarine quickly gained the reputation of being a cheap substitute for butter. Some dishonest shopkeepers cheated by adding margarine to butter and selling the result as pure butter, at a high price. Angry dairy farmers complained that the new fat would ruin them. As early as the 1880 s, governments started passing laws about margarine, forbidding names like “artificial butter” and “butterine,” which Mege chose, and replacing them with the word “margarine” in very large letters, like a warning. Mar-

garine, seen as a threat, was fought by taxation, rules, and restrictions, many of which were not removed until 1950. The name “margarine” comes from the Greek word meaning “a pearl,” for it is a pearly white colour. However, American manufacturers, attempting to make it look like butter, and therefore appeal to the eye, sold little tubes of yellow colouring with the packet so the housewife could colour it at home.

By the end of last century, a shortage of tallow led scientists to discover that margarine could be made out of vegetable oils from the coconut palm, cotton seed, peanut, and other plants. And that, by a process called hydrogenation, an oil could be “hardened.”

Whereas the original margarine made from beef fat probably contained the vital vitamins A; D and E, the margarine made from vegetable oils was deficient in

vitamins as they were destroyed by the high temperatures used. This problem was solved about 1928 by introducing concentrated vitamins A and D from whale and fish livers, and producing vitamin D by subjecting the fat to ultra-violet light. And so, at last, we have modern margarine, made in the following manner: 1. Heat and crush plantseeds (still contaminated with gums, resins, and acids); 2. Add caustic soda (to remove any waste); 3. Add fullers earth to bleach oil; 4. Use hydrogen and nickel catalyst to harden oil; 5. Neutralise, filter, and purge oil with steam; 6. Blend oils together: 7. Add water, skimmed milk, salt, colour, flavouring, and vitamins A and D; 8. Add lecithin and monoglyceride, and cool; 9. Final result: margarine. Perhaps, in comparison, our oily, yellow, or blended butter may not seem so bad, after all. Pass the butter, please!