The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1919-01-09
BUTTER WITHOUT THE COW

Kansas City Star-Butter is instinc-
lively associated in the mind with
bread. But butter has always been
relatively expensive. Even in the
days when it sold at Is cents a pound
it was high priced in proportion to
the average family's income in that
period. Hence the demand for a sub
stitute which the chemists have been
trying for many years to satisfy.
Something of the results of their work
is told in a paper by ]. j. Willaman,
a member of the American Chemical
society. He says:
"a butter substitute must be a fat.
1t must have a certain ardne at
ordinary room temperatures. 1t
should have color, else it looks lardy.
1t must have reasonable keeping
qualities. And above all, it must have
the butter flavor.
Therefore, the first thing chemists
had t O do in concocting a butter sub
stitute was to get suitable fat and
the next thing to put a butter flavor
into that fat.
up to a few years ago the princi-
pal fat in the butter substitutes was
the so-called oleo oil. This is made
by taking the body of fat beef, warm
ing it, inclosing it in cloth bags and
then subjecting it to very heavy pres
sure. 1t is thus separated into a
LIQUID portion, which filters out from
the press, and a solid portion called
stearin. The liquid portion is the oleo
oil. 1t is solid below 70 degrees Fab
renheit, but mixed with various other
fats and oils in proportion to give it
the proper grain. Lard and peanut
oil are the usual fats used with the
cleo. In some of the finer grades first
class creamery butter is added.
"To get the flavor in the oleo the
same method is used as in giving but
ter it's flavor. If butter is churned
from fresh, sweet cream it has a very
fiat taste: it lacks that snappy odor-
Gus tang which we Americans delight
to have in our butter and which is
found only in butter which has been
churned from sour cream. In other
words, the souring of the cream by
the bacteria has impaired the keen
flavor to the butter. Chemists found
that if they took skim milk and .soured
it properly it, too, had a good sour
cream flavor, and, further, if they
churned their oleomargarine fats with
his O IL skim milk the fats take on
the flavor of sour cream butter. AND
this is the method now universally
used for giving margarine the butter
flavor: it is simply churned up with
properly soured milk, then sailed. II
is finally pressed into cartons and
cooled in refrigerators. e.
within the last few years, and par
ticularly Within the last year, a ne"
margarine has come into very Wlde
use. This is made from the fat of The
c~ocoanut. The meat of the cocoanu'
is dried, usually in the sun by the
natives of the cocoanut islands. This
dried meat, called copra, is brough'
to this country in old fashioned hulks
In large oil pressing plants the OIL
is extracted by pressure, d~ecolorized
neutralized and deodorized until 1t Il
white, bland and palatable and per
fectly good for human food. This re
fined cocoantt oil, really a fat, is
solid below rs degrees Fahrenheit
II is sent to the margarine factories
whsre it is blended with a little pea
nut oil or hardened peanut oil or NJ
oil at all, depending upon the season
of the year and the particular grain
and hardness that is wanted. Tn
mixed fat is then churned with sou
milk, allowed to season at 70 degrees
salted and placed in cold storage an
the nut margarine is ready for use.
What has given the nut margarin'
its tremendous impetus is the US
made of the PSYCHOLOGY of advertis
ing No animal fats in this product
only the clean, sweet fat from nuts
And many people asked n question
But why aren't animal fats just a
good as nut fats? Don't we eat lar
and suet and cream and bacon an
fat meats whenever we get a chance
The question of the w~holesoiienes
of the product is purely a question
the care taken in its manufacture
Much care is taken to make the ma
garine palatable and so II vii keel
whether 1t comes from animal {
plant. Good margarine Of any kin
is a good food: it has a higher n
CIV value per pound than butter.