Sunflower Oil
The Sunflower was one of the Native plants of North America that became a global resource. It was a diverse family and various branches offered different products. The tuber of the Jerusalem Artichoke became food and feed throughout Europe and North America, enjoying particularly popularity in France. Certain Native Peoples used the ash from the burnt stalks of the sunflower as an alkali in the lye processing of corn for hominy. Despite the fact that pharmacists and machinists had attested to the quality of sunflower seed oil as a lubricant, paint base, and an edible lipid few large scale plantings of sunflowers for oil production took place in the United States prior to 1840. There was a 100 acre planting in North Carolina, and fields around York, Pennsylvania. [“The Helianthus, or Sunflower,” The Western Farmer (August 1840), 359]. As early as 1803 periodicals reported on experiments with oil extracted from sunflower seed. A rate of productivity was established: a bushel of seed produces a gallon of oil; an acre of middling ground can produce up to 50 bushels of seed. [“Sun-Flower Oil,” Albany Balance and Columbian Repository (April 12, 1803), 116].
North America had a lipid problem. Lard—expensive because it came from a pig and entailed the expenses of raising a hog—and olive oil—expensive because it was imported—made up a substantial portion of the edible oil used in cookery. Only butter supplied relief from the money outlays for oils and fats. Ideally the most desirable oil would derive from plants, and the portion of the plants employed would not require extensive processing. Aesthetics mattered greatly, because many oils (spermaceti for instance) had off-putting odors, would alter flavor tremendously when heated, would turn rancid quickly, would smoke at low heat, or would be overly viscous. During the course of the 18th century favorable reports on benne (sesame) oil and green peanut oil had been dispatched from North America to the Royal Society in London. As American efforts at olive cultivation faltered, the potentials of the plant based oils loomed larger in the agricultural imagination. Sunflower earned similar positive reviews: “This oil is as mild as sweet oil, and is equally agreeable with it in salads, and as medicine. It may moreover be used with advantage in paints, varnishes, and ointments” [1803, 116]. What did it taste like? “It is destitute of smell, and in taste somewhat resembles that of almonds” [“Claver Mill-Sunflower Oil,” New York Farmer (December 1834), 318.”
Sunflower seeds took hold on the farmstead not as oil seeds but as poultry feed. The husbandry of chickens and turkeys exploded during the first half of the 19th century, and the question of what could be readily grown that did not require much processing became a topic in the agricultural press. The chicken yard mulberry tree was one answer. But sunflowers proved another. [Mrs. Kirkland, “Sunflower Seed for Poultry,” American Agriculturist (May 1845), 161].
Manufacture of sunflower oil in quantity took place in Bethlehem PA, as one of the projects of the Moravian community. As late as the 1840s the oil had no general fixed market price; its local value depended upon how extensive the manufacture of paint was in a locale.
n the 19th century Russia took the lead in breeding sunflower, creating the mammoth varieties that dominate field culture today. Sunflower oil, because it stood under no Russian Orthodox Church prohibition during lent, became the lipid used universally in Russian food preparation. When introduced into North American culture in the 1880s, the mammoth Russian sunflowers, with their expansive seed heads yielded as many as 50 bushels of seed per acre in good soil. Because of the plant’s cold tolerance, it could be grown as far north as Canada, and in northern climes was intercropped with potatoes, the sunflowers being planted between every 4th & 5th row of potatoes. Harvested before the heads ripen to avoid shattering, the sunflowers were traditionally dried and beaten with flails on a barn floor. Cold pressed to preserve quality, the seed rendered about 20% weight in oil. (Three quarts a bushel cold pressed, a gallon if hot pressed.) Pressed in a mechanical screw, the seeds exhuded a limpid light yellow, nearly odorless oil. The leftover seedcake made good livestock feed, often being mixed with cowpea hay;
The production of oil would remain a piecemeal enterprise until the post-WW II era when the United States, mirroring the USSR’s ramp up of sunflower oil, began planting seed acreage in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Texas and California. In 1967 sunflower oil reach commodity status. A substantial amount of the oil was incorporated in the production of margarine. The use of sunflower seeds for confectionery purposes also increased in the post-War period.
The 1970s saw the intensive breeding of sunflower to create a range of chemistries in the oil. The natural sunflower is rich in linoleic acid—from 50% to 75%. By breeding seed with higher percentages of stearic and palmitic acids, the melting point of sunflower oil was raised. High oleic acid with lower linoleic acid forms also exist. These new cultivars of sunflower produce oil suited to various industrial purposes. Culinary sunflower remains the natural high linoleic form, usually cold pressed in mechanical screws and filtered. Modern breeding has not concerned itself much with questions of flavor. The size of seeds has been more consequential with the Mammoth Russian and related varieties gaining avid followings. One high performing modern variety that has won respect for its culinary quality is Royal Hybrid 1121 (see header illustration).