Responding directly to a substantial prize offered by Emperor Napoleon III to find a cheap, stable butter substitute for the French military and the working-class urban poor, chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès patented an industrial emulsified spread made from clarified beef tallow and skimmed milk, naming it oleomargarine. The invention initiated a massive global dairy war, as powerful dairy farmers lobbied fiercely for decades to pass laws banning the product from being colored yellow, forcing manufacturers to sell it as a stark white paste to discourage consumption.

This transformation of an essential, ancient pastoral symbol (butter) into a chemically engineered, industrial factory product served as a frequent target for late-nineteenth-century agrarian and realist poets. Writers used the image of white, synthetic margarine as a potent poetic metaphor to explore the rising deception of modern consumer society, the erosion of authentic country life, and the cheapening of the working-class diet.