Margarine vs. Butter: What’s the Difference?

Listen to This Article:

For decades, health experts, researchers, and the public have debated whether butter or margarine is the better option for health and flavor. Though you might use them for the same purpose in the kitchen, margarine, and butter do have important differences in flavor, ingredients, and nutrition, and each may be best used in different contexts.

Let’s compare these two common cooking fats for nutritional content, flavor, health impacts, and culinary uses.

Margarine vs. Butter: How Are They Different?

Butter and margarine are both used as toast toppings, sauté oils, and cooking fats in cakes, muffins, pie crusts, and sauces, so how are they different?

The simple answer is that butter is made from cream separated from cows’ milk while margarine is made from partially hydrogenated or emulsified vegetable oils, such as soybean, canola, or sunflower oil.

When it comes to their macronutrients, both margarine and butter have about 11 grams of fat per tablespoon, but the breakdown of these fats is different: butter has seven grams of saturated fat and 31 mg of cholesterol, while margarine has two to three grams of saturated fat and no cholesterol.

Butter contains Vitamin A and trace amounts of Vitamins E and K, plus calcium, phosphorus, and potassium, while margarine does not contain these nutrients unless it’s been fortified.

Another important difference between margarine and butter that may affect how you use them is in their melting point and smoke point.

Vegetable oils generally have a higher smoke point than butter, so they may be a better choice for high-temperature cooking, like sautéeing and oven roasting.

However, margarine’s melting point is lower than that of butter, causing butter to remain solid up to a higher ambient temperature. This can make butter the better choice for things like cake frostings, or table butter, especially on a hot day.

How Butter Is Made

Many people have long enjoyed butter as a favorite cooking fat. They enjoy it on toast, melted on popcorn, as a great non-stick cooking option for eggs, and as a flavor enhancer for their favorite dishes. They’re not alone. People have been making butter since ancient times, with its earliest appearance in the historical record in approximately 8,000 B.C.E.!

The pale yellow cube of butter on your breakfast table is traditionally made from one ingredient: cow’s milk cream. Traditionally, dairy farmers allowed their fresh milk to stand so the cream would rise to the top.

The cream was collected and placed into a “churn,” a special cylindrical wooden bucket fitted with a wooden paddle inside. A person would churn the butter by hand, raising and lowering the wooden paddle in the churn. The agitation eventually “clabbers” the butter into a clump, separating the butter from the milk, and leaving buttermilk behind.

Anyone who has beaten their whipping cream a little too long has experienced cream turning into butter!

The butter was then rinsed to remove any buttermilk remnants, salted if desired, and then pressed into butter molds.

Today, butter production is more mechanized but uses the same basic science. Dairies use centrifuges to separate the milk fat, pasteurize the cream before churning, and use mechanical churns to create butter.

Nutrient-Dense Fat: Butter’s Status as Healthy Food and Food Villian

Many people believe butter is an unhealthy food, but is it?

Butter’s bad reputation is due to its saturated fat and cholesterol content. One tablespoon of butter contains approximately 11 grams of fat—7 of which are saturated fat—and 31 mg of cholesterol.

In the 1950s and 1960s, scientists linked saturated fat and cholesterol with heart disease. Since butter had both, public health experts vilified it, and people began to choose margarine as an alternative because they believed it to be healthier.

Newer research has suggested that the relationship between saturated fat, cholesterol, and heart disease may not be as simple as previously believed. Butter may not be as big of a risk as was once thought. Used appropriately, it’s now thought that butter can be an important part of a healthy diet.

Butter also contains Vitamin A, small amounts of Vitamins E and K, and trace amounts of calcium, phosphorus, and potassium. Additionally, butter is sometimes fortified with Vitamin D.

The Origin of Margarine: A Modern Alternative

If you grew up between the 1960s and 1980s, you may have learned that margarine was a healthier alternative to butter. Margarine is a butter-like spread that is made from vegetable oils instead of milk fat.

Margarine is typically made from soybean, canola, palm, sunflower, or corn oil, or a combination of these oils. One tablespoon of margarine contains 7-11 grams of fat, 2-3 grams of which is saturated fat, and only trace amounts of cholesterol.

Margarine producers often partially hydrogenate the source oils, meaning that extra hydrogen molecules are added to the oil molecules. This process allows the oils to be solid at room temperature, similar to butter. Once the oils are hydrogenated, producers may add emulsifiers to prevent the oils and water from separating, as well as flavoring and coloring, to make them look and taste more like butter.

However, hydrogenated oils contain trans fats. Trans fats have been linked to a risk of high LDL (bad) cholesterol, decreased HDL (good) cholesterol, inflammation, and an increased risk of heart disease.

While hydrogenated oils and trans fats aren’t generally considered healthy, many margarines are made without hydrogenated oils. Emulsifiers may be used instead to create a similar effect.

Margarine vs. Butter: Which Is Healthier?

When it comes to choosing a solid fat for cooking and “buttering your bread,” both butter and margarine have been made to look like the bad guy, and you might feel a little confused about which option to choose.

The truth is that there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong choice, and both are perfectly valid ingredients for making your favorite dishes. There may be situations where butter is the best choice and others where margarine would be better.

Both butter and trans-fat-free margarine are sources of healthy fats in the diet and can be incorporated into cooking in various ways to support not only your health but also the quality and flavor of your culinary creations.

For example, while trans fats in margarine can increase your risk of heart disease and inflammation, if you prefer margarine, you can choose one made without hydrogenated oils and avoid these risks.

On the flip side, while butter does contain saturated fats and cholesterol, there is increasing evidence that these facts alone do not mean butter is bad for you. As long as your doctor has indicated butter is a healthy choice for you, you can continue to use butter in your baking and cooking.

When to Best Use Margarine vs. Butter in Cooking

In general, you can use either margarine or butter in most cooking applications if that is your preference. That said, there are a few situations where one might be better than the other.

For example, you may have noticed that butter and margarine have different flavors. Margarine is often flavored to taste like butter, but it’s not exactly the same. So in situations where a true butter flavor is important for how you’d like your dish to taste, use butter.

Since margarine may have added stabilizers, like guar gum, it can impact your dish if you use it in a cheese sauce or gravy. To avoid unwanted texture issues, use butter.

On the other hand, margarine has a higher smoke point due to its vegetable oil content, so it may be a better choice for pan sautéeing that requires high heat, like stir-fries.

Margarine is also a great substitute for butter for vegetarians, vegans, or other plant-based eaters who prefer to avoid animal products, and for people who are dairy-sensitive or lactose intolerant.

If your doctor has said you should be concerned about saturated fat and cholesterol in your food, margarine may be the best choice, and can generally be substituted into your cooking anywhere you would use butter.

Finally, if you value a farm-to-table ethic, butter is a single-ingredient cooking fat that could theoretically come from your neighborhood farm, while margarine is a food product that requires factory equipment to produce. In addition, palm oil, a common ingredient in margarine, is one of the top causes of global deforestation.

Delicious Ways to Use Butter That Don’t Work with Margarine

Though you can use margarine and butter interchangeably, there are a few culinary situations where none other than butter will do the job. Here are a few situations where butter is the better choice.

Browned Butter

Simply melt butter in a sauté pan over medium heat until the water evaporates and the milk solids brown a little. Browned butter adds a delicious toasted caramel flavor to your dish, especially desserts.

“Monter au Beurre”

Literally translated as “put in the butter,” this French cooking technique involves adding a pat or two of butter to your sauce to finish it. It imparts a silky mouthfeel and enhances the richness of the flavors. It is delicious with steak sauces, reductions, tomato sauce, and more.

Flaky Pastries

Though plant-based chefs have undoubtedly found ways to recreate the magic without butter, the repeated folding of pastry dough makes an irreplaceably flaky, buttery, crumbly texture in finished pastries, like croissants. Some would say the same applies to pie crusts. Margarine doesn’t produce quite the same effect.

Compound Butter

Compound butter is whipped butter with added flavorings, designed to be spread on bread, fresh sweet corn, or even slathered on steak. Simply whip your butter and add in flavorings, such as herbs, flavored salts, spices, sugar, or anything at all, and serve on steak or dinner rolls. Margarine doesn’t quite hold together in the same way.

Carmelizing

Cooking thinly sliced onions long and slow in several tablespoons of butter produces a delectable sweet and salty topping for hamburgers, dahl, or steak. You can also caramelize other foods, like nuts, peppers, or fruits. Similar to browned butter, the milk solids brown and mix with the sugars from the food to create a flavor-rich glaze.

Tips for Using Margarine as a Butter Substitute

In some cases, margarine is the cooking fat of choice. Here are a few tips for substituting margarine for butter in your cooking projects.

If you’ll be using margarine for baking, choose margarine labeled “for baking” as it typically has a higher fat content and lower water content, which will improve your results.

If you’ll be using margarine to bake croissants, cookies, and scones, make sure your margarine is very cold and work quickly to prevent too much melting. Then, thoroughly chill your dough before baking. This will keep the margarine solid or semi-solid for longer, improving your results.

Additionally, because margarine has a lower saturated fat content and often contains more water than butter, it may have less flavor. You may need to add flavoring or seasoning to account for this.

Learn the Food Science of How to Use Butter and Margarine at Culinary School

Getting good results with ingredients like butter and margarine can take some study in food chemistry and practice under the mentorship of experienced chefs.

A Culinary Arts or Baking & Pastry Arts program at Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts can help you explore the basics of using ingredients like butter and margarine. Or, if plant-based eating is your passion, our Plant-Based Culinary Programs can help you create professional dishes without animal products or animal byproducts like butter.

Reach out to our Admissions Team to learn more about how Escoffier can help you reach your culinary goals today.

IF YOU LIKED THIS ARTICLE ABOUT MARGARINE VERSUS BUTTER, CONSIDER READING THESE ARTICLES NEXT:

• How to Make the Five Mother Sauces
• How to Become a Pastry Chef
• 6 Pastries Every Professional Baker Should Know How to Make

This article was originally published on July 9, 2014 and has since been updated.