food chemistry
idly speculating about whether a "natural" margarine or vegetable shortening could be gotten by simply fractionating a commonplace vegetable oil (soybean oil say) known to have a moderate amount of tristearin and tripalmitin. yield would be poor (maybe 10-15% of the feedstock) but you'd get a solid cooking fat without chemical modification, and the unsaturate-rich fraction would be useful for other things
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food chemistry
that led me to this gem.
https://archive.org/details/vegetablefatsoil00andrich/page/n6
a whole chapter on solid vegetable fats, woohoo! there's a bunch aside from the usual suspects (coconut, palm, cacao) but nothing that looks like a promising easy way to get a margarine substitute
