From Wild West to Finally Tuned Instrument The bad old days of margarine whose production quality was difficult to control are over, thanks to one man’s invention of the modern emulsifier. What was the impact on the industry – and what lies ahead for these powerful production aids? Perhaps unsurprisingly, things were different 100 years ago. Today, there’s a widespread (no pun intended) push to cut down fats in the foods we eat, to counter the adverse effects of modern, more sedentary lifestyles. Our forefathers, however, were highly active, and needed high-density energy sources. Fat, therefore, particularly in compact, concentrated forms, was highly desirable. And for the working class of the time, margarine stepped in to provide exactly such a low-cost source of energy. By the 1900s, margarine production had become big business. Early margarines, however, had their drawbacks. For one thing, they were very unstable, tasting terrible within three weeks of production. A similar lack of self-control marked their use in food production, spitting wildly and leaving undesirable after-tastes. One man whose achievements have had a profound effect on margarine production was a Danish inventor and businessman by the name of Einar Schou. In 1908, he retired from the UK margarine business as a wealthy man, but his inventive mind had yet to make its most important contribution to the food industry. Seven years later, Schou became the inventor of the modern commercial emulsifier, and its first patent holder. The first controllable emulsifier Schou’s emulsifier, known as Palsgaard Emulsion Oil (PEO), was particularly welcome because it dramatically changed the process of producing margarine. Virtually from one day to the next, manufacturers could achieve good, strong emulsions with better stability. They could win control over their margarines, ensuring consistent results. And they could get by pretty well even if they didn’t have the most up-to-date production equipment. With PEO, manufacturers had obtained an entirely new understanding of what was going on at a chemistry and functional level, meaning different raw materials and emulsion types could be brought into recipe development, all depending on what the margarine would be used for. In the 1970s, for example when the idea was to reduce up to half of the calories in margarine, around one in five production runs failed, at tremendous cost to manufacturers. Today as then, it’s not hard to make a good emulsion, but it has become easier to balance between stability and instability without having to reject batches – ‘failed’ runs 1
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