Margarine

Margarine is a spread made primarily from vegetable oils or other fats and formulated as an alternative to butter. Its texture and firmness are produced by blending fats with water and other ingredients.

Emulsion: A mixture in which droplets of one liquid are dispersed throughout another liquid that does not normally mix with it. Margarine’s water and fat phases are held together as an emulsion.
Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès: A French chemist who developed an early margarine product in the nineteenth century. His patent established the original commercial concept of margarine.
Baking: Cooking food by heating it in an oven, often using doughs or batters. Baking margarines are formulated to provide particular structure, lift, and tenderness.
Butter: A dairy product made by churning cream to separate butterfat from buttermilk. Butter is the traditional dairy spread that margarine was designed to replace.
Hydrogenation: A chemical reaction that adds hydrogen to unsaturated compounds, often changing oils’ melting behavior and stability. Partial hydrogenation once made margarine firmer, but could create trans fats.
Napoleon III: Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870 and nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. He offered a prize for an affordable butter substitute, prompting Mège-Mouriès’s work.
Puff pastry: A laminated pastry made from layers of dough and fat that expand into a flaky structure when baked. Specialty margarine can replace butter in the fat layers of puff pastry.
Shortening: A solid or semisolid fat used in baking to inhibit gluten formation and create a tender texture. Unlike table margarine, shortening is generally formulated without a water phase.
Interesterification: A process that rearranges fatty acids among fat molecules, changing a fat blend’s melting and crystallization properties. It can produce firm margarine without the trans fats associated with partial hydrogenation.
Margaric acid: A saturated fatty acid historically believed to be a major component of fats, later found to be a mixture of other acids. Mège-Mouriès named his invention after the mistaken identification of this supposed fat component.

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