Who patented margarine to replace butter?
The first MARGARINE.
The first MARGARINE was patented in France by Hippolyte Mege-Mouries of Paris, on 15 July 1869, and was the only entry in prize competition organized by Napoleon III for ‘a suitable substance to replace butter for the Navy and the less prosperous classes’.
Mega-Mouries had begun his experiments at the Ferrne Imperiale de la Faisanderie, Vincennes two years earlier, and is said to have outraged the villagers by underfeeding his cows in the cause of science. The conclusion he drew from this exercise was that the natural tat in a cow’s body is the agency that produces milk, and that it could also provide a substitute for butter. The final result of his researches took the form of a compound of suet, skim milk, pig’s stomach, cow’s udder and bicarbonate of soda. At one stage of the process it had the appearance of ‘a cascade of pearls’, so the inventor called it `margarine’–from the greek margarites, meaning ‘a pearl’.
Although a factory was established at Poissy to undertake manufacture of margarine, the Franco-Prussian War broke out before production was under way. Two enterprising Dutch butter-merchants, Jan and Anton Jurgens, acquired the rights for 60,000 francs a year and in 1871 opened the world’s first fully operative margarine factory at Oss in Holland.
In England, where all margarine was imported in the early years, the new food was advertised as ‘Butterine’ until this name was prohibited by Act of Parliament in 1887. Austria, where a factory was set up in 1874, known as Wiener Sparbutter. The Americans were prepared to call it margarine as long as they did not have to eat it—demand remained very low while a law against adding colouring matter was enforced. No one wanted to spread their bread with something that looked like lard.a
