During the process of writing The Houses That Sears Built, I read several early 20th Century issues of Ladies’ Home Journal. Lots of fun ads in these old magazines, but this was one of my favorites. I mean, just look at this woman:

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Not a happy woman

Before there was Crisco, there was Cottolene. Both of these shortenings are made from cottonseed oil, but Cottolene had a secondary ingredient: Beef tallow.

An early ad for this pre-Crisco product makes this bold promise:  “Since the art of cooking was originated there has been no food product so successful as in every way as Cottolene.”

According to an article that appeared in an online magazine, Journal of Antiques (February 2002),  Cottolene became popular during a time when a disproportionate number of Victorian men and women suffered from neurasthenia (a physical complaint with a myriad of symptoms that was shockingly similar to what we’d call Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) and dyspepsia (tummy troubles). Popular doctors of the day proclaimed the trouble was an unhealthy diet comprised of too much lard (rendered hog fat) and too much beef fat. Cottolene was the healthy alternative and was made from 90% cottonseed oil and a mere 10% beef tallow. (For those who don’t know their fat, tallow is rendered fat from cattle. Lard is rendered hog fat.)

Cottonseeds (and their oil) had been an unused byproduct of the cotton plant. Beef tallow was available in abundance from the Chicago stockyards, which were jam-packed with extra-chubby corn-fed cattle in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The producers of Cottolene had plenty of raw material from which to manufacture their product.

And as we now know - from reading this advertisement from the 1903 Ladies’ Home Journal - only old Fogy’s refuse to use Cottolene in their cooking.