MARGARINE. 321 



margarine which the author has had an opportunity of examining 

 in the course of time, the prima Wiener sparbutter was the best. 



In Holland, so far as the author is aware, no margarine is made, 

 or, at any rate, sold as such. In that country the preparation of 

 mixed butter, since the year 1870, has been developed to an extent 

 which is found nowhere else. As long as the Dutch butter market 

 is in existence, there will be no lack of dealers to mix the superior 

 and the inferior kinds of butter, and produce an average saleable 

 article, and thus make profit. Against the method of mixing, which 

 is still carried on elsewhere, it is impossible to do anything. Butter 

 has, however, been mixed with all sorts of fats, a condition of affairs 

 which formerly only very rarely occurred. At the time of the 

 Franco-German war, when the demand for butter became greater 

 and greater in Holland, inferior butter, Galician, Russian, and 

 Finnish butter, at first mixed with milk and starch solution, and 

 subsequently also with fats and oils of different kinds, were all 

 worked together by a butter-worker and sold as butter or mixed 

 butter. The discovery of Mege-Mouries, which was either not at all, 

 or only to a very slight extent, utilized in Holland, merely helped to 

 further develop the mixed butter industry, by furnishing it with 

 acceptable raw material. From the use of butter-workers the 

 business advanced to the manufacture on a factory scale, and fac- 

 tories were erected to mix butter with fats, oils, milks, and colouring 

 matter in large butter- vats, at temperatures at which the fats in use 

 melted. The proportions in which these raw materials were mixed 

 were as follows: 15 to 35 of milk, 40 to 70 of margarine, 13 to 35 

 of oil, and from to '5 of butter. The better sorts contained, indeed, 

 an addition of from 10 to 20 per cent of the best butter. The de- 

 sired oily condition was imparted to the product by the addition of 

 a considerable quantity of oil, according as it was desired to produce 

 an article possessing a dull opaque substance, more of the nature of 

 a salve, or a transparent wax-like material. This difference in the 

 preparation accounts for the fact that the Dutch so-called artificial 

 butter, which, both in a salted and unsalted condition, is placed on 

 the market like butter, possesses no uniform chemical composition. 

 From the above short description, it will be seen that the preparation 

 of good margarine from fresh animal fat, obtained from healthy 

 animals, and without the addition of milk, cream, or butter, is a 

 useful and beneficial discovery. It has had the effect of utilizing 

 animal fats, and of rendering them capable of manifold application, 



( M 175 ) X 



