As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.........
In 1913, the NK Fairbank Company turned out for the price of 1 dollar a cookbook by Elizabeth O. Hiller. The reason for the cookbook was not 52 Sunday Dinners, but for the reality of a product which was attempted to be marketed in cottonseed oil.
Cotton plants produced cotton, but after the ginning process, there was left that seed which was found to contain oil. It really had no real use, but it was edible and with that it was attempted to be placed into the human food chain replacing hog lard and butter.
This was before rape (canola), soy and corn oil. Canola became the name as Rape seed was something people cringed over.
It might surprise people that soybeans were not a real crop in America until after the 1970's. That crop in meal was exported to Asia, and after soy milk for turning little boys into girls and girls into boys, there was all that oil left over, which in turn was dumped into the cooking market.
That is the way the entire "cooking" oil was progressed in the world. Palm oil was a huge production, but with coal oil or kerosene taking over lighting from whale oil and palm, it became a non market oil, except in soaps or greases.
It can now be found in "Crisco" in combination with Soy and Palm, which once was in corn, and once in cotton seed oi.
Markets and control are interesting things. America once was corn oil and only corn oil, in the 1960 to 1970 period, but that changed to soy oils, and the Canadian produced Canola or rape seed oils, and of course the cotton seed oils were pushed out of the process.
Less cotton in America, meant less market share, and manufacturers turned to other oils, when NK Fairbank was staking all it was on Cottolene.
There is a reason no one knows of the Fairbank Company and everyone knows of Crisco.
Cottolene was a combination of beef suet and cottonseed oil. Suet is tallow, and what one uses to create candles as tallow is not liquid or melting at room temperatures. In chemistry, it would appear that the cotton seed oil was joined with tallow in order to make it a lard, or called Cottolene, otherwise it would run out of a can.
People were used to solid lards in butter and lard of hog or bear. Both of which start melting in the 90 degree range. As "oils" were not accepted in glass jars were still expensive, it was lard in pails which when tipped over would run out.
The great trend of liquid vegetable oils did not take place in America until the 1970's with the advent of plastic bottles.
For all of it's wonders, Cottolene was taken out of the food chain, and like tallow is now just an ingredient with greases for non human consumption.
It is interesting that while olive oil was the consumer product in Biblical times, it was not something in vogue from approximately the time of soap onward.
Soap is oil mixed with lye or wood ash. Originally olive oil was used with steam in how people "bathed" as oil cut the human oil and dirt.
The world went tallow candles from beef or wild game for lighting. It was hog or bear lard for cooking. Goose fat was utilized also.
The process then went to whale oil for lighting and lubrication, which then was of a venue of palm and cocoanut, to the coal oils for lighting, and when things went electric, all that oil had to change, and it was either attempted to be fed to humans in cotton seed or livestock.
Kerosene when distilled was found a use for, in it was burned in jet engines. None of these oils are interchangeable really as humans can not eat coal oil and you can not burn tallow in a jet engine.
It is fascinating which markets win out through corporate backing and through market use. Where all was corn, became soy, and now is canola and olive.
In 1913, you could not find soy or canola oil, and yet they are now the basis of all food production. It is one of the interesting things of human interaction as while America produces more swine than ever, it is hard pressed to find a use of it outside of industry.
None of it matters really outside of observation in human interaction. Enough of this.
agtG
