Emperor Napoleon III offered a prize to anyone who could find "a suitable substance to replace butter for the navy and less prosperous classes." The French chemist Hippolyte Mege-Mouries had already been working on just such a project and quickly submitted his entry for the competition. He won! This was no great surprise because his was the only entry. The inventor had noted that cow's milk contained fat even when the animals were undernourished and were losing weight. He concluded that the fat was body fat. He, therefore chopped up suet, minced in some animal stomach and cooked the mixture in slightly alkaline water to get "butter." He didn't like the flavour and thought it needed more "cow," so he added chopped cow's udder. And so margarine was born! It was patented in 1871 and was widely produced by 1880 because it was much cheaper than butter. There was no health connotation, margarine's attribute was that it was cheaper than butter.
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