When was shortening invented

In the first half of the 19th century there is increasing mention of the growing scarcity of oils and fats in Europe. The advent of meat canning and cold storage of whole carcasses further reduced supplies of fat.

The greatest pressure prior to had been to produce more hard fats for candles and oil for lamps, but by the late s there were increasing pressures to produce substitutes for edible fats as well, especially butter. This led to the development of margarine by Mege Mouris in France in as described in the next section. The key ingredient in margarine was oleo oil, pressed from edible tallow. With the growth of the margarine industry, large quantities of edible oleostearine, the by-product of oleo oil production, became available.

In Europe, relatively little of this was used in foods; it continued to be used in tallow candles until the early s, when it was gradually replaced by the petroleum-based paraffin-wax candle. But in America it became the basis of an entire new industry, making lard substitutes.

The earliest records of the production of compounded cooking fats on a household scale in Europe date from the first half of the 19th century. They were probably produced at a much earlier date. There was even some commercial production in the mids, but the first large scale production of lard substitutes and shortenings developed in the United States. There are several reasons that these products never became very popular in Europe until after World War II: 1 Northern Europeans preferred lard; 2 Inexpensive margarine was widely available and came to be used in cooking in many of the ways Americans used shortenings; in Europe both table margarines and cooking or industrial margarines were developed; 3 As early as there was legal prosecution of lard compounds in England under the Sale of Foods Act.

This may have discouraged further experimentation on the Continent as well; 4 Europe did not grow a lot of oilseeds, which were the raw material for shortening; 5 Europeans did not traditionally use lard or shortening in basic breads; Americans did. To help make up its deficit in food oils and fats, Europe started in about to use relatively saturated vegetable fats, as from coconut and palm oils, which had long been imported for use in the candle and soap industries, as a substitute for animal fats in foods.

Europe also imported huge quantities of lard from America, just as in the period following World War II it began to import huge quantities of soybeans from America to process into oil and meal. Prior to the main producer of shortening in Europe was the UK, followed by Germany. The same year Germany produced only 16, tonnes, compared with , tones for the USA Schwitzer By the s, with low-cost edible oils widely available from the US and lard prices steadily increasing, shortening production in Europe was increasing steadily.

UK production in had risen to , tonnes, while German shortening production had risen to 51, tonnes vs. According to Gander , the leading European countries in terms of per capita consumption of shortenings and compounds were as follows figures for margarine are given in parentheses for comparison : Netherlands 7.

Germany 3. By comparison, USA consumption was 7. Unfortunately we have very little information?? When was soy oil first used? When and why did it first start to be widely used? How much is used today and what percentage is this figure of the total? We only know that large amounts were being used by the s and early s.

Soon, companies were selling cottonseed oil by itself as a liquid or mixing it with animal fats to make cheap, solid shortenings, sold in pails to resemble lard. Shortening's main rival was lard. Earlier generations of Americans had produced lard at home after autumn pig slaughters, but by the late 19th century meat processing companies were making lard on an industrial scale. Lard had a noticeable pork taste, but there's not much evidence that 19th-century Americans objected to it, even in cakes and pies.

Instead, its issue was cost. While lard prices stayed relatively high through the early 20th century, cottonseed oil was abundant and cheap. Americans, at the time, overwhelmingly associated cotton with dresses, shirts and napkins, not food. Nonetheless, early cottonseed oil and shortening companies went out of their way to highlight their connection to cotton. They touted the transformation of cottonseed from pesky leftover to useful consumer product as a mark of ingenuity and progress.

Brands like Cottolene and Cotosuet drew attention to cotton with their names and by incorporating images of cotton in their advertising. Like other brands, it was made from cottonseed. But it was also a new kind of fat — the world's first solid shortening made entirely from a once-liquid plant oil.

From the beginning, the company's marketers talked a lot about the marvels of hydrogenation — what they called " the Crisco process " — but avoided any mention of cottonseed. Tagged Culinary , Facts , Invention. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Visit Ten Random Facts's profile on Pinterest.

Most posts contain affiliate links. For more about the history and myths of margarine, read Butter v. A plastic fat is one that is one that is still soft and moldable when it is solid. How plastic a fat is depends on the ratio of solid to liquid triglycerides it contains at a certain temperature. Ideally, you want these fats to be plastic over a wide temperature range.

This tends to require commercial modification, such as hydrogenation of vegetable oils usually soybean or the ineresterifying of lard. It is easy to see the difference by comparing hydrogenated shortening to clarified butter. Butter has a narrow plastic range compared to lard or hydrogenated shortening which makes it tougher to work with for baking.

When it is taken straight from the refrigerator, it is too hard to easily incorporate into doughs or to cream. If it gets too warm, it becomes liquid, and therefore equally unsuitable for doughs and creaming. This article contains one or more Amazon affiliate links. See full disclosure. All Rights Reserved. Please contact for permissions. Butter is a type of shortening Vegetable Shortening and Margarine.