Vive la Margarine!

As you probably know, I like to pour over old cookbooks. It gives me a chance to find forgotten recipes that might be worth trying along with a few that definitely are worth avoiding. Well, during today’s trawling I came across this recipe for Victory Meat Dish from Mrs. Scott’s North American Seasonal Cookbook: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.  

The name was the first thing to catch my attention. It reminded me of the infamous Freedom Fries served at the House of Representatives Cafeteria during 2003. America’s good for redefining and food-isolationism during times of military upheaval and, since the cookbook was written by Anna B. Storck Scott in 1921 (not long after the end of World War I), the name isn’t surprising. The recipe contains another little nugget of arcane culinary practice though, the use of Oleomargarine which, by chance, is why I decided to write this blog post on Bastille Day weekend.

 

Oleomargarine was one of a new class of food products in the twenties: processed food products. Oleomargarine, even without the E-Z Color dye-pack, has a colorful history. Its origins can be traced back to Emperor Napoleon III. Napoleon was faced with the problem of feeding his navy and the poor subjects who’d overthrown the French monarchy over that whole “let them eat cake” thing so he offered a prize to anyone could create a cheap and palatable butter substitute. The winner was French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès. In 1869, Mège-Mouriès patented a process for churning beef tallow with milk to create a butter substitute he dubbed Oleomargarine.

The prospects for this new product of science weren’t exactly sunny yellow, though. The product failed to gain widespread acceptance and Mège-Mouriès sought the help of a Dutch company (Jurgens) to build an international market. It was at this time that dyes began being added to the product to give it a more butter-like appearance.

It’s probably obvious that dairy farmers and butter manufacturers didn’t take well to the introduction of a cheap butter substitute. Lobbying by the dairy industry resulted in a tax of two cents a pound being levied against margarine (no small sum in the 1800s). Artificially colored butter became contraband in thirty US states by 1900. Between 1886 and 1948 Canada enforced a total ban on margarine with only a short exception during World War I and in Quebec bans on dying margarine remained in place until 2008. Margarine producers didn’t take these restrictions lying down, instead they sold dye-paks along with their product so that consumers could make their own artificially-yellow butter substitute at home.

The growth of the Pure Foods Movement of the 1920s eventually helped margarine’s case, preventing dairy producers from including additives in natural butter that would make it more spreadable. Smooth-spreading margarines became the toast-topper of choice during the depression and the rationing of dairy products during World War II convinced many consumers to switch.

In 1950, the U.S. government finally repealed its margarine tax, and the market continued to grow as individual states reversed their bans. Even the medical industry seemed to be on the side of margarine for a while, declaring that the high levels of saturated fats in butter put diners at a higher risk of heart disease. As we all know, though, the healthcare pendulum always tends to swing back and forth and eventually margarine got the doctor’s thumbs down for the use of trans fats which not only increased risk of heart disease but raised levels of LDL cholesterol (that’s the bad stuff).

The truth? Actually there never was good evidence replacing butter with margarine cut the chances of having a heart attack or developing heart disease. So, if I were to include this recipe in my Bastille Day feast I’d have to leave out the margarine in spite of its French connections. Still, vive la France!