Margarine vs. Shortening — What's the Difference?

Margarine (, also UK: , US: (listen)) is a spread used for flavoring, baking and cooking. It is most often used as a substitute for butter.

Shortening is any fat that is a solid at room temperature and used to make crumbly pastry and other food products. Although butter is solid at room temperature and is frequently used in making pastry, the term shortening seldom refers to butter, but is more closely related to margarine.

A fatty solid butter substitute consisting of a blend of hydrogenated vegetable oils mixed with emulsifiers, vitamins, coloring matter, and other ingredients.

A fat, such as butter or lard, used to make cake or pastry light or flaky.

A spread, manufactured from a blend of vegetable oils (some of which are hydrogenated), emulsifiers etc, mostly used as a substitute for butter.

A shortened form of something, as a word.

(dated) The solid ingredient of human fat, olive oil, etc.

The act of one that shortens.

A processed food product used as an inexpensive substitute for butter, made primarily from refined vegetable oils, sometimes including animal fats, and churned with skim milk to form a semisolid emulsion; also called oleomargarine; artificial butter.

The act or process of becoming shorter.

Margarin.

Fat that is solid at room temperature, such as margarine or lard (not usually used of butter), used to make shortcrust pastry.

A spread made chiefly from vegetable oils and used as a substitute for butter

Verbal noun of shorten: the process by which something is made shorter; a reduction in length.

Present participle of shorten

The act of making or becoming short or shorter.

That which renders pastry short or friable, as butter, lard, etc.

Fat such as butter or lard used in baked goods

Act of decreasing in length;