The Great Big Butter Battle

March 26, 2025·27 min·2 clips

AJ Palm's fake butter wins top prizes, humiliating expert judges and making headlines across the country.

1. Not Past It uses a fraudulent entry in Pennsylvania's 1895 Dairymen's Association butter competition to examine American anxieties about food purity and food system transparency. 2. Host Simone Polanin interviews historian Benjamin Cohen, author of Pure Adulteration, and Vermont farmer Dave Chapman, director of the Real Organic Project. 3. The episode argues that the gap between what food is labeled and what it actually contains — visible in 1895 Meadville — is essentially unchanged in 2023 grocery stores. 4. By the late 19th century, the U.S. was shifting from an 80% rural agrarian society to an urban industrial one, with factory food processing operations spreading from New York to Chicago. 5. Specific food frauds of the era included glucose syrup dyed amber and sold as honey, rotten or contaminated meat disguised by meatpackers, and milk diluted with unidentified fillers that Cohen estimates killed roughly 8,000 children annually. 6. The anxiety around industrial food is captured by Cohen's description of a public asking 'is this OK, can we eat this, is it really what you say it is?' — the same question at the heart of the Meadville butter contest. 7. Butter was economically central to the 19th century agrarian economy because it was the primary value-added dairy product; Cohen explains farmers depended on butter sales to keep their farms financially viable. 8. The judges of the Meadville butter competition included a Penn State professor of agriculture, a dairy cow breeder whose cattle won first prize at the World's Fair, and a veteran butter maker — all considered the most credible experts in the field. 9. Newspaper editor AJ Palm of the Meadville Messenger was outraged by state and federal taxes and regulations on margarine, which he believed was a legitimate, cheaper alternative to dairy butter with 'real legs as an industry.' 10. Palm ordered a shipment of margarine from Chicago, 400 miles away, entered it in the competition under his name, and won 2nd and 3rd place — the judges concluding it was great butter. 11. To maximize the embarrassment, Palm published the story of his successful con in his own newspaper, and the scandal was picked up by the Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Times. 12. One reporter wrote that 'recent events are likely to becloud the public mind as to whether there is any difference between oleo margarine and the best butter' — and whether any expert could tell them apart. 13. The judges responded by sending sealed, affidavit-certified samples of Palm's submission to the state chemist at Penn State for chemical analysis — a procedure Cohen calls 'cutting-edge technology' for 1895. 14. After several weeks, the chemist's analysis concluded the submission was real butter, not margarine, meaning Palm had somehow sent butter to a butter competition while thinking he was cheating with margarine. 15. Cohen describes three theories for who switched the samples: someone who caught wind of the scheme, the state chemist himself (who was friends with the judges), or a simple accident; the true explanation has never been established. 16. The judges published a triumphant pamphlet to the state with the headline 'It Was Butter,' reigniting press coverage and reversing the earlier ridicule. 17. Polanin and producer Jasper visited a nearby grocery store and counted 83 different butter, margarine, and hybrid products, noting that Country Crock's 'classic red barn' packaging lists water, soybean oil, and palm kernel oil as its main ingredients. 18. Dave Chapman, the Vermont organic farmer, says the largest certified organic milk producer in the U.S. operates 'huge confinement livestock operations in Colorado and Texas' — and that 'the biggest certified organic is not organic.' 19. Listeners interested in food history, consumer protection, or the political economy of food labeling will find tightly reported specifics and a satisfying 19th-century mystery. 20. Listeners hoping for a definitive answer about what to buy in the butter aisle, or those uninterested in food policy history, are likely to find the episode unsatisfying.

As heard by us

A butter prank turns a state fair into a sharp lesson in regulation and showmanship.

Not Past It turns a Pennsylvania state fair into a neat little comic brawl over butter, margarine, and public humiliation. It starts quickly in Meadville, with dairy country, farmers, judges, prize samples, and a butter contest that feels ready-made for trouble.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a butter scam that turns a Pennsylvania ag fair into a newspaper scandal.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Not Past It