It was named through a minor scientific error. French chemist Michel Chevreul, whose investigations of color influenced the painter Georges Seurat, isolated a substance from animal fat in 1813 that formed pearly drops and was thought to be a new fatty acid. He named it "margaric acid", from the Greek margaron, meaning "pearl", even though his discovery was later proven false. In 1867, French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès, then 50 years old, began developing a synthetic butter at the request of Emperor Napoleon III. Mège-Mouriès used an extract of animal fat that was thought to contain a large amount of this "acid", inspiring him to name his product "margarine", which was patented in England under the name "butterine." Mège-Mouriès worked with suet, chopped cows' udders and warm milk. He began a revolution in the butter industry with the first commercial margarine, produced in 1869.
Margarine caught on quickly in both Europe and the U.S., where patents began multiplying. But it was two Dutch companies, Van den Bergh and Juergens, that made margarine a commercial success, after the Franco-Prussian War. In 1871, 50 factories were producing the "butter of the poor" in dairy-rich Holland. By 1883, Juergens, Europe's biggest butter dealer, was shipping 40,000 tons (36,000 tonnes) of margarine to England, its biggest customer. Juergens later teamed up with Van den Bergh, its biggest competitor, and Lever Brothers, a soap manufacturing company from England to form Unilever. Lord Leverhulme, an industrialist who formed Lever Brothers with his brother James, said, in 1918, that his company had "drifted" into the margarine business "because of its close connection with oil and fats for the soap kettle."
In 1937, Unilever bought the Newfoundland Butter Co., which mainly produced margarine. It was a stroke of good timing, because wartime shortages boosted margarine sales. But no butter-colored margarine could be sold in North America (some say in surrender to the dairy lobby, others say in support of the consumer who might have been fooled by butter look-alikes) from the late 1800s until the late 1900s. By law, margarine had to be left white, its natural color, but some manufacturers did include a bright yellow colorant that could be mixed in at home. Continent-wide, the laws have changed, with the exception of Quebec; despite a court challenge from food giant Unilever, in 2005, margarine produced inside its borders remains white.
From The Food Encyclopedia by Jacques Rolland and Carol Sherman
