WHO INVENTED MARGARINE?

Otago Witness, Issue 3123, 28 January 1914, Page 15

WHO INVENTED MARGARINE?

To a French chemist, Monsieur MegeMouries, belongs the honour—if it can be so called—of having invented the substance known as margarine. This was probably about the year 1861, and, shortly after, a factory for its manufacture was started in a suburb of Paris. This was done by MegeMourics at the suggestion of Napoleon 111. The invention was patented in England by Moge-Mourios in 1869 and in the United States in 1873. But the manufacture of margarine had already commenced in the United States, and the new industry seemed to promise well. With characteristic acuteness in quickly discerning the value of a new process with money in it, the American manufacturers at once bought this patent to protect themselves. In the'course of time the manufacture of butter substitutes readied considerable proportions in the United States. Connected, as it naturally always has been, with the meat industry, it increased as that industry increased. The Federal Government recognised in it a rival, to a certain extent, to the manufacture of genuine butter, and also a moans of adding to the inland revenue. Laws were therefore passed by the Federal Government imposing taxes and regulating its sale. During recent years the Dutch manufacturers have been most successful in pushing tho industry, which has received a fresh impulse by the use of vegetable fate in place of animal fats. In this connection copra—tho dried kernal of the coooanut — is largely employed, and tho demand for the material is so keen that prices have advanced enormously. Nut butter is an attractive title ( but there is a great difference between its aroma and flavour and that of genuine butter.