Did you know that this year marks the 90th anniversary of an invention which revolutionised the margarine industry? This article discusses the backdrop to the invention of the first artificial emulsifier for foodstuffs and how it has come to affect the margarine industry. By Cai Christensen, Business Unit Manager Lipid & Fine food. Palsgaard A/S. How it all began During the mid 19th century the price of butter along with that of other foodstuffs was sky-rocketing as a result of the growing industrialisation. By 1867 this lead French emperor Napoleon III to promise a prize to whoever could provide a cheap and durable alternative to butter, which could be sold to the poor working class citizens as well as be used in the navy and the army. The prize was won by French chemist Hyppolyte Mège-Mouriés, who had invented a product which was primarily based on beef fat mixed with a little milk and water. The product was named margarine from the Greek word “margeron” meaning pearl, which referred to the pearly appearance of beef fat at room temperature. Understandably, this margarine wasn’t much of a success. However, other countries soon adopted the idea, including the Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries. In Denmark, the first margarine factory was established in 1883 by Otto Mønsted, who later expanded to Great Britain and built the world’s largest margarine factory, Southall. The key architect in the development of the margarine manufacture at Southall was a man named Einar V. Schou, who in 1907 revolutionised the margarine industry by inventing the double cooling drum – an invention which meant simpler manufacturing methods and a much better margarine. Making margarine - old school Originally, margarine was manufactured from animal fat mixed with skimmed milk and making the margarine solid at room temperature. However, shortages in supply soon led to the addition of vegetable oils, and between 1900 and 1920 margarine was produced from a combination of animal fats and hardened and unhardened vegetable oils. The inventor goes to work By 1912 Einar V. Schou had left Southall and returned to Denmark, where he had purchased the Palsgaard Estate. Being an entrepreneur Schou spent the next 8 years working on a solution to one of the major problems of margarine manufacturing: How to merge oil and water. By heating linoleic- or linolenicacid containing oils to 250 oC (high polymerising) Schou created a tough, elastic oil-containing substance, which he diluted with oil. The emulsion resulting from this provided a very fine distribution of the minuscule water particles. Each particle of water was encapsulated by an oil film, which meant that it would be isolated. Technically, Schou referred to an outer phase made from oil and an inner phase made from water. Einar V. Schou, the inventor of the world’s first synthetic emulsifier. Palsgaard Technical Paper, May 2010 Making margarine - 90 years of emulsifiers for water-in-oil emulsions 2
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