Fats and Their Uses

I am not willing to write “or margarine” after “butter” every place it turns up in this book. In the recipes where the butter flavor is essential, this is stated. When it comes to olive oil, I don’t mean “or salad oil” unless specified, because the substitution would result in a fatal dullness. There are few things drearier than a vinaigrette dressing made with tasteless vegetable oils.

Margarine has improved enormously since the first noxious white block that looked like lard and tasted like Vaseline. Only the very poor used it in those days, but during World War II when all the butter went to war, everybody had to bear with it. I will never understand why we need more butter in wartime than in peacetime—the same men were eating before they put on uniforms. With the margarine, a little packet of orange powder was sometimes provided. A half-hour’s mashing and blending could usually make the stuff look a little more edible, even though the streaky orange sunset effect hardly resembled butter.