To close our week`s adventure into the world of the pizza, here we have a cook from Italy who, it is said, is cooking just that very thing,
Palmin is a vegetable-based cooking fat that replaces the animal based versions, primarily lard. It is often described as "Pflanzen-Butter", which means butter made of plants. However the name "Palmin" is just the brand, the substance was manufactured by H. Schlink & Cie of Mannheim.
The story of butter substitutes goes right back to 1869, when food was, for some reason I have yet to discover, in short supply. Now I have looked it up I have discovered that there was a combination of reasons - a growth in population, a bad couple of years for farmers, and the first grumblings of the Franco Prussian War, which would erupt in earnest late the following year.
Napoleon III, at that time the self-endowed Emperor of France, wanted to solve the problem, especially with respect to the armed forces, who needed food, he thought, more than anyone. So he offered a grand prize to anyone who could come up with an alternative to butter. The winner was a man with the rather extraordinary name of Hippolyte Mege-Mouries, and he made his substance out of beef tallow and olive oil. He called it Oleomargarine, his own combination of "oleum" (the olive oil) and "margarite" (which means shiny). You will notice that the beef bit was not mentioned. Napoleon liked the substance but not the name, it was too long, and so he ditched the first four letters - and we use his word, margarine, to this day.
These sets were designed to fit in an album which displayed an entire set of six cards per page. More than that though, they quite amazingly cut the corner slots dependent on whether the sets, in order, were horizontal or vertical, therefore avoiding the awkwardness of having to turn the album every time the cards are a different way around in their design.
Now you will often find this set described as "Cooks", or as "Cooking", but the word "Kuche" actually directly translates to "Kitchens". It is a set of six, which are :
- Deutsche Kuche (German Cook)
- Oesterreichische Kuche (Austrian Cook)
- Jtalianische Kuche (italian Cook)
- Hollandische Kuche (Dutch Cook)
- Franzosische Kuche (French Cook)
- Americanische Kuche (American Cook)
