Margarine

Since its inception, margarine has had to define itself in opposition to butter, at first as a cheaper and then as a healthier alternative. Hippolyte Mège Mouriès, a French chemist, concocted the first margarine out of beef suet and milk in 1869. Two years later he sold his process to Jurgens (later merged with Unilever), a Dutch dairy company that found a ready market for its synthetic butter in industrial Europe’s working class. These early margarines were made mostly of imported American animal fats, a cheap by-product of the booming midwestern meatpacking industry. In 1873 an American patent was granted to Mège Mouriès, who intended to expand production to the United States. There was, however, already competition in New York, where the U.S. Dairy Company had begun production of “artificial butter” by that same year.