This week marks a milestone in food history; on July 15, 1869, the French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès received patent number 86489 for margarine.
His invention was the result of a contest launched by Emperor Napoleon III, who wanted to find an inexpensive, alternate food product for the butter used by his Navy. Mège-Mouriès won that contest with a spread made with tallow, which satisfied Napoleon, but not the general public. In 1872, however, the pharmaceutical chemists Théophile-Jules Pelouze and Félix Henri Boudet improved on the patent to create an emulsification with skimmed milk, which proved to be a commercial success.
We're marking the occasion with this ca. 1930 Capital City Dairy Company poster stamp from Hagley Library's collection of Carter Litchfield photographs and ephemera on the history of fatty materials (Accession 2007.227). From the mid-19th century to World War I, these advertising labels, slightly larger than a postage stamp, were a popular collecting fad. To view this item and other materials from this collection online now, click here to visit the collection's page in our Digital Archives.