Olive presses ran by 6000 BC; margarine waited for 1901 chemistry
Archaeology puts olive oil near present-day Israel by the sixth millennium BCE. Palm oil later greased Britain's industrial machines. Then Wilhelm Normann's 1901 hydrogenation turned liquid plant fats solid—and the age of Crisco, margarine, and canola branding began.
Vegetable oils are triglyceride mixes pressed from seeds (soy, canola, grape, cocoa butter) or other plant parts (olive, palm, rice bran). Beyond frying and dressing, they lit lamps, lubricated engines, and entered mummification recipes beside cedar and cypress oils in ancient Egypt. West African palm oil, long a local staple, became a British industrial lubricant in the Industrial Revolution and later a cornerstone of packaged foods worldwide.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele linked fats to glycerol in 1780; Michel Eugène Chevreul later showed they were fatty-acid esters. Normann's hydrogenation created what became known as trans fats and powered global shortening. Procter & Gamble launched Crisco from cottonseed as early as 1911, partially hydrogenating under nitrogen to mimic lard while ginning mills gladly offloaded seed. Mid-1970s Canadian breeders cut erucic acid in rapeseed and coined canola; the FDA cleared the name in January 1985 for U.S. planting.
Rudolf Diesel ran his first engine on peanut oil in Augsburg on 10 August 1893, hoping farmers would fuel machines from their own fields. Between 2000 and 2022 world vegetable-oil output rose about 130 percent to 212 million tonnes, with palm driving most of the jump. From soap and paint drying oils to high-flash-point frying fats that beat water's boiling point, plant oils now sit at the crossroads of kitchen, factory, and fuel tank. Most commercial oil is now pulled from seeds with hexane, a petroleum solvent that yields more for less money than traditional crushing, and Henry Ford once went further still, building a car almost entirely out of soybeans.
Source: Vegetable oil
