Mmm, soft serve. Michael O Campo/Flickr Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female prime minister, died Monday morning at the age of 87.

Though the Iron Lady is recognized for her vast political and economic impacts, her culinary contribution to the world is less known.

As a chemist for food manufacturer J. Lyons and Co. in the 1940s, Thatcher was part of the British research team that made soft-serve ice possible, according to The Washington Post's Caitlin Dewey, citing a 1983 New Scientist article.

Thatcher, and colleagues, invented a way to add more air into the ice cream so that it was less dense and used less ingredients, which also made it more cost-effective.

The new formula also made it possible to push ice cream through a machine, producing the signature soft-serve swirl that we're familiar with today.