Napoleon III and
Margarine.
from
from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com
For the visitor to France Emperor Napoléon III’s most well-known works
are the rebuilding of the center of Paris.
Acting under the orders of Napoléon III a new center of Paris was built under the
direction of Georges-Eugène
Haussmann; for that incredible work, which remains the Paris center you see today, Georges-Eugène Haussmann would be made Baron Haussmann by Napoléon
III.
Photograph by courtesy of Dominique Pipet.
Emperor Napoléon III
Haussmann also directed the creation of Paris’s sewers, a very important work; that made the air of Paris breathable. Today when in Paris you may visit part of those sewers; it is an interesting one hour educational tour and not at all smelly.
Napoléon III and Margarine.
B = Beurre, Butter ,
From: This Organic Life 2001.
Joan Dye Gussow, Organic food guru and author.
Not too well remembered by the French is that Emperor Napoléon III was also responsible for a competition to create a butter substitute, and that competition produced margarine. If you remind a Frenchman or French woman of that disaster they are likely to walk off with a pooff! You may lose friend.
Despite
the disagreements that still exist over margarine and butter in those pre-refrigeration days there was a
true need for a butter substitute that did not quickly turn rancid like butter. Napoléon III’s armies and navy urgently need a transportable fat, and Napoléon III’s solution
was a scientific competition. The competition was won by a French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès
(1817-1880). Mège-Mourièss’ invention
involved mixing processed beef fat with skimmed milk; the successful chemist
patented his invention in 1869. In 1871 the inventor sold his patent to a Dutch company that later
would become part of the company
Unilever.
Photo courtesy of Meddy Garnet,
White Margarine from Quebec, Canada
Getting margarine to look like butter was
another problem. In the beginning many countries passed laws that banned the
coloring of margarine. The last law that
prohibited the adding of coloring to
the originally white margarine was only repealed in the province of Quebec, Canada in 2008. I
know of none others.
Napoléon III
also gave the order for the rebuilding of Les Halles,
then the central Paris food market. Of all Napoléon III's major works Les Halles with its bronze and glass decor is no more; Les Halles was relocated, in 1969, to a much larger area in Rungis
to the south of Paris. The Les Halles métro station
indicates the general area where the market was, and a number of restaurants that were made
famous by the onion soup they served in the Les Halles
market have remained there. Some of those
original restaurants still offer service 24/7; however from experience, onion soup is not
always available 24 hours a day. The modern, huge, food market of Rungis,
outside Paris may be visited by bus or metro, and there are multi-lingual guided tours for
professionals, as well as tourists.
Photograph courtesy of Mike Fitzpatrick
The Empress Eugenie.
Napoléon III final blunder was not margarine, though if he had not lost a war I believe there is possibility that the French may have exiled him for promoting the invention of margarine.
The final blunder of Napoléon III was being drawn
by the Prussian Bismarck into a stupid war; a war that neither Napoléon nor France
wanted; that war was a result of what we now call diplomacy . Napoléon III rode to that war on horseback, at the
head if his armies, he rode like a story book King; on the 2nd September 1870 Napoléon III was captured by the Prussians and
imprisoned in Germany. In Paris, two days later France announced the creation of the third French Republic and deposed Napoléon III and exiled him to England. That Franco-Prussian war, and other events led,
eventually, to a single a united German State and onwards to WWI.
In exile in the UK Emperor Napoléon III and the Empress Eugénie was already well accepted by the British Royal family the result of the end of the British-French wars and mutual head-of-state visits from before Napoléon III's exile. Empress Eugénie was a already a favorite of Queen Victoria, and since Napoléon III had spent three years in the United States, when he had then been exiled there, from France, for his early revolutionary activities, he spoke English well. Napoléon III died, in England, in 1873, not from an excess of margarine, but rather from a botched medical operation to remove gall stones. Napoléon III’s crypt, in England, was paid for by Queen Victoria.
Napoléon III is buried in the crypt, behind the high altar,
in the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Michael's, Farnborough, Hampshire,
England. Here, I am including an correction, much appreciated, from an anonymous
reader: Napoléon's only wife, the Empress Eugénie, who died aged
94 in Madrid, Spain, in 1920 is not
buried beside her husband, rather behind and above the altar of the chapel in
the crypt. Buried in the crypt across from Napoléon lies Napoléon Eugène Bonaparte (1856- 1879), Napoléon's and Eugénie' s only son. Napoléon Eugène is called Napoléon IV or the Prince
Imperial by the still active French Bonapartist's. Napoléon Eugène died, at age 23, fighting with the
British Army in the Zulu wars in South Africa and is buried in the crypt across
from his father.
