Butter or margarine?

It’s been a question of health, a question of taste, and even a question of jail time for men like John L. McMonigle:

But first things first: Why would anyone even bother to invent a butter substitute?

Around 1870, French Emperor Napoleon III held a contest for a butter substitute, something that would keep better on a ship than butter did and be cheap and tasty. The prize was won by Hippolyte Mege-Mouries, who mixed suet fat with skim milk and created margarine.

Margarine was made in the United States shortly thereafter, and by the 1880s, butter producers were feeling pressure on their sales—margarine cost about half the price of butter. In 1880, Harper’s Weekly joked, “Affrighted epicures are informed that they are eating their old candle-ends and tallow-dip remnants in the guise of butter.” Dairy producers argued that margarine was being sold as butter and that it was a health risk. They wrangled a ban on margarine in New York, but the courts overturned it in 1885. So they tried a new angle: if you can’t ban ’em, tax ’em.

The federal government passed the Oleomargarine Act in 1886. It required a license for manufacturing margarine and the licensing fee was high, as were the fees for wholesaling and retailing margarine. The act also imposed a two-cents-per-pound tax on margarine sales. President Grover Cleveland, from the great dairy state of New York, called the measure a revenue bill.

But steps to reduce the appeal of margarine went beyond mere finances. By 1902, 32 states had passed margarine coloring bans. Butter is yellow; margarine, which at the time was produced with animal fat, was gray. Dairy producers opposed coloring margarine yellow. So margarine took on lots of colors, and, in some instances, margarine was sold with a home coloring kit. Meanwhile, entrepreneurial types who weren’t opposed to working outside the law tried dodging taxes or passing off pounds of marge as the real buttery McCoy, which landed some folks, like McMonigle, in prison.

Eventually margarine’s animal fat was replaced with vegetable oil, the gray tone went away, color bans were lifted, and margarine and butter both found a place on American tables. Though maybe not the same table. Or at the same time.

(Adapted from Beau Sharbrough’s “Buttering Our Toast,” which appeared in Ancestry magazine.)

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