Just learned about it today, when I played last Thursday's NYT crossword.

My brother called me up one day, after I had given him some of our grandmother's cookie recipes. He tried several stores looking for 'oleo', and nobody knew what it was.

Oleo is a famous jazz composition by Sonny Rollins.

That's what we called it when I was a kid. And it came in a plastic bag with a little button in the center that contained yellow food coloring. It was my job to smash that button and knead the bag until the whitish "oleo" was colored uniformly yellow like butter.

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My grandma called margarine and butter "oleo". It's one of the few things I can read on her recipes.

I learned everything I know about cooking from her.

You must be ancient. I googled it and the only images are old-timey handdrawn adverts.

Which is why initially it had a hard 'g'

With any luck, you will be ancient one day, too.

I already feel like I am, every time I sit up and something creaks.

Didn't mean it as an insult though. I thought your comment was funny is all.

It was first made from beef tallow for a challenge created by Napoleon, can also be made from coal oil, and responsible for one of the first federal commerce laws.

FYI, I'm 73 and retired

The white color makes sense if it was named after being pearl-like.

That has nothing to do with it, though. It was because of the dairy farmers in the midwest. They didn't want people to think that it was actual butter.

> Dairy farmers also successfully lobbied for restrictions that banned the use of yellow dyes to make margarine look more appetizing. By 1900, artificially colored butter was contraband in 30 U.S. states. Several states took even more extreme measures to turn consumers away from margarine—they required the product to be dyed an unappealing pink color.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/25638/surprisingly-interesting-history-margarine

Interesting, I have never heard of that. There is a gap between me and my younger brother, so I knew what is was from baking with my grandmother.

My introduction to margarine was in elementary school, and it was horrid. For whatever reason, I was embarrassed to leave the uneaten pat on my tray, and so I would stick it to the bottom of the cafeteria table, which ticked off the janitor, but I was never caught.

I wonder could margerine be used as an ineffective polish

Was also illegal in the US for a while or had to be dyed pink so it couldn’t be passed off as butter

I remember oleomargarine and having to mix in the yellow coloring from the WW II (early '40s) days when I was a child. And if that makes me seem ancient to you, then I deduce that you are callow indeed.

I once worked in a dining hall at Penn State. One of the walk-in refrigerators had the word OLEO in large lettering on the door. During my time there it held pretty normal kitchen stuff. However, the dining hall was around since the mid-20th century so I have sometimes wondered since then if at some point earlier they felt the need to stock an entire refrigerator primarily with margarine.

I think they mean the natural white color is why we still call it margarine. Your facts are correct though. My wife did this as a kid in Iowa, where dairy ruled over all.

But it isn't white anymore. They have been coloring margarine yellow for many years now.

Huh? Why is this being downvoted without any comments? Is margarine still white in some places? If I'm wrong, tell me, don't simply downvote and leave.

Ineffective polish? Sure!

 

Also, margarine is excellent at dissolving adhesives (namely those pesky stickers/tags/labels that won't remove cleanly) thanks to its high oil content

Nowadays they call it "plant-based butter."

Bob Uecker was born on an oleo run he jokes in his Broadcasting HoF speech.

Hi.

We all do.

I grew up in Iowa and several of my friends grandparents (as well as mine) called margarine “oleo.” This was the 90s.

Hey there 'slick'.

My Mum told me about doing the same when she was a little girl back in the 30s.

That’s what my grandmother called it.

I went that far back? My experiences with it would be in the mid 1950s

When my Mum said “ when I was a little girl” it usually meant pre 1940, though it could have been the early 40s.

It used to be white and came with yellow dye so that it would look like butter.

Yeah so what? We all know what color margarine is.

Apparently we don't all agree on what color margarine is. That is the current discussion if you'd care to join in.

And when you say 'my Mum', I'm assuming you're somewhere in the U.K. I'm in the U.S. Maybe that has something to do with it. Or maybe it was going on for some time before I became aware of it. I was pretty young then.

There's a song about it even philosopher kings - oleo

Woo, free industry.

Literally one of the first federal commerce laws: Blatant market manipulation and stiflement of innovation in favor of established industry.

I’m in the US but my Mum was originally from Nova Scotia.