Wisconsin banned yellow margarine until 1967, so buyers dyed it themselves
Margarine is naturally white, and American dairy interests fought hard to keep it that way. States banned colouring it, so manufacturers shipped packets of yellow dye for customers to knead in at home, often leaving streaky results. Wisconsin, the last holdout, only lifted its restriction in 1967.
The spread was born of an imperial challenge. Napoleon III wanted a cheap butter substitute made from beef tallow for soldiers and poorer households, and in 1869 Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès answered it. He named it oleomargarine, combining Latin for olive oil with a Greek word for pearl, after margaric acid, which the chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul had identified in 1813. Commercial success eluded him, and in 1871 he sold the patent to the Dutch firm Jurgens, later part of Unilever.
The recipe soon moved away from beef. Also in 1871, Henry W. Bradley of Binghamton, New York, patented a blend of vegetable oils, mainly cottonseed, with animal fat. Hydrogenation, advanced by Paul Sabatier and James F. Boyce, let manufacturers harden plant oils, and between 1900 and 1920 margarine mixed animal fats with hardened and liquid vegetable oils. The Depression and wartime rationing squeezed animal fat supplies so hard that by 1945 the original version had nearly vanished, and American producers had switched almost entirely to vegetable fats by 1950.
Butter makers fought back from early on. With some 37 US companies making margarine by the late 19th century, dairy lobbying produced the 1886 Margarine Act, which loaded producers with heavy taxes and fees. Colour became the next battleground. Butter from grass-fed cows is slightly yellow from carotene, while margarine looked like lard, so makers began tinting it in the late 1880s. By 1902 dairy firms had secured laws against the practice.
The workarounds were inventive. Families mixed dye into a bowl by hand, since electric mixers were rare before the 1920s. In 1951 the W. E. Dennison Company patented a plastic pack with a dye capsule inside: squeeze to pop it, then knead. Wartime rationing had already helped, since butter cost more ration points. Colour bans began falling around 1955.
Source: Margarine
