Hippolyte Mège was born October 24,1817, in Draguigan in southern France.

He began his career as a chemist at the age of16 as an assistant in his home town. Followinga period of training in Aix-en-Provence, hemoved to Paris and, after a competitive exam-ination on April 1, 1838, took a position as apharmacist at the Hôtel Dieu hospital whichhe held until 1846.

His first invention was a remedy for syphilis.Copahin, a common remedy at the time, couldnot be taken orally by some patients. Mègetreated the drug with nitric acid which elimi-nated the side effects and was awarded a prizefor this achievement.

By 1850, other inventors surnamed Mègeappeared. Thus, he added his mother’s maidenname to his own and, therefore, is known asHippolyte Mège Mouriès except in officialdocuments. Other early patents granted to himincluded effervescent tablets, paper making,sugar making and the use of egg yolks forthe tanning of leather.

By the late 1840’s, Mège had changedcareers from pharmacy to a consulting chemistand in 1852, he began to carry out research onfoods. He deduced from analytical data thatsome species of animals have more calciumphosphate in their blood. Thus, Mège mar-keted a product consisting of calcium phos-phate and protein and sold it as a health food.He sent a report on the subject to the Académiedes Sciences who encouraged his work witha contribution of 500 francs. Amember of thecommittee who recommended the grant wasnone other than Michel Chevreul (describedearlier in this series, inform 14:564-565, 2003)who later was to have considerable influenceon Mège’s career.

From 1854–1860, Mège carried outresearch on bread making; while famous at thetime, this work has long been forgotten. Hiswork allowed the preparation of 14% morewhite bread from wheat than previously pos-sible. He lectured on his process in Berlin,Brussels and Paris and was awarded two gold

medals for it. Napoleon III awarded him theLegion of Honor, largely upon Chevreul’s rec-ommendation. However, his process was rathercumbersome and did not prove attractive tobakers because of government subsidies dis-couraging increased outputs of bread. Nonethe less, army bakeries used the process forsome time before modern milling methodsmade it obsolete.

In the 1860s Mège turned to fats, obtain-ing a patent on the cold saponification of milk—a process Chevreul was very enthusiasticabout—but the discovery proved impractical.

By 1867, Mège was busily engaged indairy research at the Imperial Farm, owned byNapoleon III, in Vincennes near Paris. He notedthat starved cows, while losing weight andyielding less milk, still produced fat in the milk.He thus embarked on a program to producebutter artificially and thus became a pioneerin biotechnology, which brought him lastingfame with the invention of margarine. (It is rel-evant to note that in 1813 Chevreul had iso-lated a substance from animal fat that formedpearly drops, which he thought erroneously tobe a new fatty acid. He named the materialmargaric acid from the Greek ‘marganon’for ‘pearl’ allowing Mège to coin the word‘margarine’ for his invention.)

The second French empire under NapoleonIII was marked by considerable economic andindustrial growth. Many French citizens migratedfrom the farm to cities, creating a demandfor butter which could not be met. As a resultbutter prices soared, leading Napoleon III tooffer a prize for anyone who could discovera process to manufacture a butter substitute.By 1869, the year the prize was offered, Mègehad completed his work and was easily thewinner.

On July 15, 1869, the French Ministry ofAgriculture and Trade granted Mège a patentfor 15 years for the processing and productionof certain fats of animal origin and the patentwas registered in England as well. In 1873, healso received a United States Patent (146,012;1-1-1873) entitled “Improvements in treating

animal fats,” and, in part, it reads, “My inven-tion, which is the result of physiological inves-tigation, consists of artificially producing thenatural work which is performed by the cowwhen it reabsorbs its fat in order to transformthe same into butter.” Shortly after the issuanceof his U.S. Patent, margarine production startedin the United States led by the U.S. DairyCompany of New York City.

Thus, the Mège process consists of 4 steps.Step 4, the emulsification process, in whichthe oleo stock is mixed with milk and mam-mary gland tissue, was thought by Mège tochange the chemical mixture of the fat throughthe action of some factor, that would now beconsidered to be an enzyme, in the cow’s udder.In the 1870s and for decades thereafter, it wasthought that the flavor of butter resulted fromthe presence of volatile acids not found in otherfats. Of course, today it is known that butterflavor results from the products of fermenta-tion between milk and microorganisms. However,step four represents a significant discovery inthat churning fat with milk does impart butterflavors and emulsification tends to impart but-ter texture to this product.

Mège deserves credit for two importantdiscoveries: (1) a bland neutral fat may beobtained by rendering with water at low tem-perature; (2) working a fat with milk tends toimpart butter flavor to margarine.

Mège obtained a patent for the canningof beef in 1875 and in 1880 a patent describedthe use of sea water salt in human nutrition.He died May 13, 1880, from a liver disease.Reportedly, only his hometown newspaperhonored his death.

G.R. List is with the food and industrial oilresearch unit of the National Center forAgricultural Utilization Research in Peoria,Illinois, USA. Contact him by phone: +1-309-681-6388. ■

264 GIANTS OF THE PAST inform • April 2006 • Volume 17 (4)

Giants of the Past:Hippolyte Mège (1817–1880)

G. R. List

Mège Mouriès, margarine’s inventor.

26 GiantsOfThePast4.06 3/29/06 9:08 AM Page 264

Please visit us at the 97th AOCSAnnual Meeting & Expo,

April 30–May 3, 2006, Booth 624.

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