Margarine is an imitation butter spread used for spreading and cooking. It was originally created from beef tallow and skimmed milk in 1869 in France by Hippolyte as a result of a challenge proposed by Emperor Napoleon III to create a substitute for butter for the armed forces and lower classes. It would later be named “margarine.”
Whereas butter is made from the butterfat of milk, modern margarine is made mainly of refined vegetable oil and water, and may also contain milk. In some locales it is colloquially referred to as "oleo", short for oleomargarine.
Margarine, like butter, consists of a water-in-fat emulsion, with tiny droplets of water dispersed uniformly throughout a fat phase which is in a stable crystalline form. In some jurisdictions margarine must have a minimum fat content of 80% to be labelled as such, the same as butter. Colloquially in the US, the term margarine is used to describe "non-dairy spreads" like Country Crock, and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! with varying amounts of fat content.
It is commonly used as an ingredient in other food products, such as pastries and cookies, owing to its versatility.
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