I was looking through some of my Grandmother's old cookbooks and alot of the recipes call for Oleo.. What exactly is it? Is it something like butter? I just wondered because I've never heard of it before..

Thanks

It is what they used to call margarine. A lot of my grandma's recipes call for it, too.

I just subsitute butter. Butter is always better. Mmmmm, butter.

margarine by it's old name.

link to wikipedia article about it (first paragraph)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine

right on Dougie

Hey, I remember when oleo came in a white block with the yellow coloring either in little package or a capsule. Mom would dump the white block in her KA and I would stand on kitchen chair and sprinkle the food coloring in. It was fun to watch the color mix through the oleo. OK, I was 3 or 4 years old - it was a big deal then.

My mom used oleo, but I thought it was crisco!  Also, I have not yet found crisco without partially hydrogenated oils so I will not use, good to know substituting butter will work in these old recipes.  

Yep, what the others said.   It was illegal to sell 'margarine'  in some states and  smuggling it across state lines could result in you being thrown in jail!   Making it white, then adding the capsule of coloring sort-of made it o.k. because no one could mistake it  REAL BUTTER!    AAaahhh fond memories  - soon to be lost due to so much time passing and no one knowing the real story:)

Butter makes everything better.

Oleo comes from latin languaje and means Oil.

thanks for help

Maria.zuzuvecha.

[url=http://pintoresferrol.net]PintoresFerrol[/url]

You can sub in butter for the oleo [margarine], but be aware that margarine has a much higher water content than butter, so the results won't be exactly the same.

Thanks for all the info and history.  I found crisco has a new formula  fully hydrogenated palm oil which supposedly has no trains fats, the really bad stuff!  I'm sticking with butter!