How McDonald's Transformed The Egg McMuffin With Just One Ingredient Swap 

The Egg McMuffin is the gold standard of fast food breakfast for good reason. The now-iconic sandwich made its trailblazing debut at a Santa Barbara branch in 1972, and it's not an exaggeration to say it paved the way for fast food breakfast as we know it. Although the Egg McMuffin changed breakfast sandwiches forever, the sandwich itself has stayed relatively consistent over the past half century: a freshly cracked egg (yes, Egg McMuffins are made to order), melty American cheese, and a slice of Canadian bacon, all held together by a buttery English muffin. However, it turns out the Egg McMuffin wasn't always quite so buttery.

If you've enjoyed Egg McMuffins for over a decade, you may have noticed that the classic breakfast sandwich tastes a bit different — and most would say better — in recent years thanks to a small but mighty ingredient swap. In 2015, McDonald's transitioned from using liquid margarine to real-deal dairy butter in many of its breakfast items. 

These days, the chain uses real butter to grill breakfast meat and eggs and top the toasted English muffins, biscuits, and bagels that form the base of many of its savory breakfast favorites. This includes the much-loved Egg McMuffin.

It's hardly a culinary secret that butter makes everything better. The rich complexity of real butter is all but impossible to recreate in an artificial product, and the full creamy flavor it adds can truly transform the flavor of a dish. Nowadays, it's generally accepted that real-deal dairy butter is an upgrade in quality and flavor compared to margarine, but that wasn't always the case. 

Margarine was all the rage in the cholesterol-fearing '70s and '80s, so it's hardly surprising that McDonald's opted for the cheaper artificial spread in earlier versions of the Egg McMuffin. As the American public realized that margarine is perhaps not as healthy as we thought it was, dairy-based butter has come back into vogue, and McDonald's has adapted accordingly.

Though it may seem minor, an ingredient swap like this isn't a simple matter for a chain as big as McDonald's. The process of phasing out margarine and introducing real butter in the Egg McMuffin (and other breakfast items) took about six months to complete. Tweaking the recipes of beloved food products can be polemic — many still mourn the loss of McDonald's deep-fried apple pies and beef tallow french fries. But most people can agree that real butter is a step up from liquid margarine, and has only improved the taste of this perfectly engineered breakfast classic.