the right chemistry: caul fat — believe it's not butter
why a wisconsin senator didn't like the taste of beef fat, and what that has to do with regulating food colour.
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by: joe schwarcz, special to montreal gazette
live and learn. i now know what the word “caul” means. but let’s start at the beginning.
this curious journey began with a question i was asked: “how is it possible that they can sell a guacamole dip that has no avocado in the ingredient list?”
never having heard of such a product, i thought i would begin by doing a search for “avocado chemical tricks” to see if perhaps some clever chemist had come up with a way of cutting costs by mimicking the taste of avocado.
that search somehow landed me on a page featuring an 1882 quote by wisconsin state senator joseph q. quarles. apparently the senator had thundered: “i want butter that has the natural aroma of life and health. i decline to accept as a substitute caul fat, matured under the chill of death, blended with vegetable oils and flavoured by chemical tricks.” i now understood why i had landed here, but my eye got stuck on “caul fat.” what was that? and what was the senator ranting about?
these days it isn’t difficult to hunt down the meaning of a word. it turns out that “caul” is just another term for “omentum,” which i knew is the fatty membrane that covers the intestines of animals and is sometimes used as a casing for sausages. it seems that it was once also used to make margarine. now i understood the senator’s ire. he was from wisconsin, “america’s dairyland,” where cheap butter substitutes were unwelcome.
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the imposter was first produced in 1869 by french chemist hippolyte mège-mouriès in response to a financial prize offered by emperor louis napoleon iii for the creation of an alternative to butter. the poor couldn’t afford butter, and his army had an issue with butter not travelling well. if it wasn’t chilled, it would spoil. “an army marches on its stomach,” napoleon i supposedly had declared.
mège-mouriès knew that butter was essentially milk fat and began to wonder where the fat came from. since milk contained fat even when cows were undernourished and were losing weight, he concluded that milk fat came from the cow’s body fat. without enough food, the cows seemed to be sort of draining away. so, the inventive chemist chopped up some beef fat, added milk, minced in some sheep stomach for texture, and cooked the mixture in slightly alkaline water to get “butter.” the concoction looked like butter, but it didn’t taste great. it didn’t have enough “cow” flavour! mège-mouriès’s remedy was to add some chopped cow udder. that apparently did the trick because in 1870 napoleon iii awarded him the prize and presented him a factory to mass produce the new product. all that was needed now was a name.
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in 1813 michel chevreul, another french chemist, had isolated an acidic substance from animal fat that formed intriguing pearly drops. he named it margaric acid, from the greek “margaron,” for pearl. since margaric acid came from animal fat, which was also the source of mège-mouriès’s discovery, “margarine” seemed a suitable name. it later turned out that margaric acid was not a single substance but rather a mixture of oleic and palmitic acids.
by the 1870s, margarine had arrived in north america, much to the annoyance of the dairy industry. in the u.s., a fierce lobbying effort against the intruder resulted in the passing of the federal margarine act of 1886 that slapped a heavy tax on margarine. the same year, canada took it one step further and banned the sale of margarine outright. some states, led by wisconsin, followed suit and also instituted a ban. where sales were still allowed, margarine was often coloured yellow to make it look more like butter. in 1898, twenty-six states outlawed the addition of colour while others took a different approach, requiring margarine to be coloured pink to make it more unappealing. this was struck down by the supreme court on grounds that enforcing the adulteration of food is illegal!
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when the canadian law was passed prohibiting the production of margarine, newfoundland was not yet part of the country. having no large dairy industry, it embraced the production of margarine. in 1925, the curiously named newfoundland butter company, that never produced any butter, was established and began to produce margarine from fish, whale and seal oil. being much cheaper than butter, margarine was commonly bootlegged into canada. when newfoundland joined the confederation in 1949, it was with the stipulation that it would be allowed to keep producing margarine. that was granted, although sales to the rest of canada were prohibited. but just a year later, canada rescinded the ban on margarine and allowed provinces to regulate sales.
some provinces required margarine to be bright yellow or orange, while others prohibited any colouring. by the 1980s, most provinces had lifted such restrictions but ontario did not allow the sale of butter-coloured margarine until 1995. quebec, the last canadian province to regulate margarine colouring, repealed its law requiring margarine to be colourless in july 2008.
the laws banning the addition of colour made some producers resort to chemical tricks such as the inclusion of a packet of yellow dye with the product. consumers could then make their own yellow margarine by kneading in the dye, a rather messy business. a more clever idea was the inclusion of a small “colour berry” in the plastic bag that contained the margarine. this could be burst without opening the package, resulting in coloured margarine with no mess.
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now back to my quest for chemical tricks used to make the “no-avocado guacamole dip.” i drew a blank here, being unable to find any such commercial product. but i did find a number of recipes that offered tricks for making guacamole without avocado. most used young soybeans harvested before they harden, commonly known as edamame, available fresh or frozen. the trick is to mash these in a blender with green onions, lime juice, garlic, coriander leaves, olive oil, cumin and greek yogurt. definitely no “caul” is called for. whether this concoction really tastes like avocado i have no idea, but with the soaring price of avocado, it may be worth a try.
on the other hand, there is that recent study in the journal of the american heart association that found a lower risk of heart disease associated with higher avocado intake. … hmmm.
joe schwarcz is director of mcgill university’s office for science & society (mcgill.ca/oss). he hosts the dr. joe show on cjad radio 800 am every sunday from 3 to 4 p.m.
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