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Home » Fat » Oil » Vegetable Oils

Vegetable Oils

Vegetable oils are oils obtained from produce such as corn or beans. Some may be all from one source; some may be blends including oils from seeds such as rapeseed or sunflower seed.

You might think that all edible oils are vegetable oils, but they’re not: there are nut oils, and there are fish oils — whale oil, for instance, was popular not so long ago.

You could technically class olive oil as a vegetable oil, but generally it is considered to be in a class by itself, and, if anything, olives are technically “fruit.”

Generally, manufacturers aim for a high-smoke point and a neutral taste to make vegetable oils as all-purpose as possible.

If a recipe calls for a vegetable oil, it generally means an unflavoured or very mild-flavoured oil such as Crisco, Canola, Corn Oil or Sunflower Seed Oil.

Literature & Lore

In 1957, the Wesson Oil company put pressure on Clementine Paddleford, America’s foremost food writer at the time, to use the phrase “vegetable oil.” Competing phrases were “all-purpose oil” and “liquid shortening.” There is the possibility that they also threatened to pull their advertising from This Week magazine if Paddleford didn’t comply. She did, after a trip down to New Orleans where they wined and dined her. [1]

Sources

[1] Alexander, Kelly and Cynthia Harris. “Hometown Appetites.” New York: Gotham Books. 2008. Page 192.

Other names

French: Huile végétale
Spanish: Aceite vegetal
Indian: Kadalennai

This page first published: Jul 29, 2004 · Updated: Jun 20, 2018.

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