Pizza Rolls Had been Invented by Prepare dinner for Firm That Made Chinese language Meals?

In Might 2024, a publish on the subreddit r/todayilearned (archived) claimed that pizza rolls — the savory meals snack synonymous with frozen pizza firm Totino’s — had been created by a prepare dinner who was looking for new methods to make use of the egg roll-making machine at an organization that specialised in manufacturing Chinese language meals.

Comparable posts appeared on Facebook and elsewhere on Reddit.

(SappyGilmore on Reddit)

Briefly, the declare that pizza rolls had been invented within the Sixties by a prepare dinner who labored for a Chinese language meals firm was true.

Quite a few information retailers — from The New York Times, to the nonprofit Minnesota information web site MinnPost — and multiple snack meals websites have credited the creation of the pizza roll to meals trade titan Jeno Paulucci.

The Italian American businessman founded a U.S. firm referred to as Chun King that created and manufactured frozen Chinese language meals. Chun King was an early innovator in bringing objects like chop suey and chow mein to American dwelling kitchens within the Forties and ’50s.

In keeping with his 2011 obituary in The New York Times, Paulucci stated in 1955: “The meals trade was lacking the boat, permitting the eating places to deal with all of the take-home enterprise.”

As a part of its “frozen Cantonese dinners,” Chun King included tiny egg rolls. These had been made by a machine developed by inventor Eugene Luoma — additionally the inventor of Zip-It Drain Cleaner. This machine was specifically designed to “robotically extrude fillings onto a steady sheet of egg roll pores and skin, then fold, seal and minimize the product into little pillows,” in line with the memoir (screenshotted under) of Luoma’s sister Beatrice Ojakangas, who herself was a prepare dinner at Chun King.

In her memoir, Ojakangas, who was in reality the prepare dinner referenced within the declare, stated Paulucci was planning to promote Chun King to the tobacco firm R.J. Reynolds however that “he wished to retain the rights to the extremely profitable egg roll expertise that he had developed” to be able to create “a line of snack meals merchandise for a brand new firm as soon as Chun King had been offered.”

The prepare dinner then wrote that she was tasked with experimenting with totally different fillings for the egg roll, and 5 – 6 of her 55 concepts concerned “pizza” fillings. When Paulucci sampled the “pizza” fillings, Ojakangas wrote, he shouted: “That is it!”

However reasonably than changing into a Chun King product, the “Jeno’s Pizza Roll” was to be offered by a brand new firm — Jeno’s Inc.

(“Home made Finnish Rye, Feed Sack Style, and Different Easy Components from My Life in Meals” by Beatrice Ojakangas)

In 1966, Paulucci did sell Chun King to R.J. Reynolds for $63 million, and a part of the deal included a stipulation that Reynolds would produce pizza rolls for Paulucci’s new firm, Jeno’s Inc., at price plus 5%. 

Commercials for Jeno’s Pizza Rolls may be seen within the YouTube video under.

Jeno’s Pizza Rolls had been eventually sold to the Pillsbury Company for $135 million. In 1993, Jeno’s Pizza Rolls had been folded into Pillsbury’s Totino’s model and have remained Totino’s Pizza Rolls ever since.

As for Ojakangas, she has written greater than 30 cookbooks and has accrued a wide range of prestigious culinary awards, together with a number of James Beard Foundation Awards. 

Nevertheless, the Reddit publish did embody a misattributed quote. It claimed Ojakangas stated: “Pizza rolls are nothing however egg rolls with pizza crust and filling.”

In actual fact, Paulucci made that assertion to R.J. Reynolds when the time got here to start out producing the product, as described within the book “Self-Made: The Tales of 12 Minnesota Entrepreneurs.”

(“Self Made: The Tales of Twelve Minnesota Entrepreneurs” by Carol Pine and Susan Mundale)

Sources