What happened is that America became electrified and stopped using candles. I am not kidding, this is the genesis of butter's decline. An American company called Procter and Gamble had figured out a way to solidify liquid cottonseed oil?"a waste product of the cotton industry?"into a hard fat that could burn in candles. The process was called partial hydrogenation, which reconfigured the molecules in liquid oils into an unnatural type of fat called trans fats, which are hard at room temperature. Since their candle business was declining, Procter and Gamble decided to promote partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil as a food. They called their product Crisco?"short for "crystalized cotton seed oil"?"and it came on the scene in 1911 along with a cookbook called "The Story of Crisco."