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 Prego's "Sauce of the year" | |
| Product type | Pasta sauce |
|---|---|
| Owner | Campbell Soup Company |
| Country | U.S. |
| Introduced | 1981 |
| Markets | Worldwide |
| Website | campbells.com/prego |
Prego (Italian for "You're welcome!") is a trade mark brand name pasta sauce of Campbell Soup Company. It was introduced internationally in 1981. [1]
Prego offers many different varieties. The traditional pasta sauce is available in nineteen different flavors including marinara, traditional, mini meatball, zesty mushroom, and roasted garlic Parmesan. In Prego's Organic line, two flavors (Organic Mushroom and Organic Tomato and Basil) are made with all organic ingredients. A third line in the Prego Pasta Sauce family is called Hearty Meat sauce. It comes in Meatball Parmesan, Authentic Italian Sausage, and Three Meat Supreme flavours. Yet another line is called Chunky Garden Pasta Sauce which consists of flavors such as Garden Combination, Mushroom Supreme, Mushrooms & Green Pepper, and Tomato, Onion & Garlic. In Asia, specific regional flavors are available, including Tom Yam in Thailand and Malaysia.
In May 2024, Campbell Soup Company expanded its Prego brand with the introduction of a new line of Creamy Pesto sauces. This new product line is designed to diversify the predominantly red sauce-dominated Italian sauce aisle by offering a creamy and versatile alternative. The Prego Creamy Pesto sauces blend the richness of Alfredo sauce with the herby brightness of traditional pesto, using ingredients such as fresh basil and cream. The line includes three varieties: Creamy Basil Pesto, Creamy Roasted Garlic Pesto, and Creamy Parmesan Pesto. [2]
Prego was the result of efforts in the 1970s by Campbell's Soup to expand its work with tomatoes beyond the soup business. Although senior management originally wanted to create a product to directly attack Heinz (which had sued Campbell's Soup over unfair business practices) the company had no competitive advantage producing ketchup. On the other hand, Campbell's R&D group and Chef Werner Schilling developed a process to allow thick tomato sauce to be mass-produced without "weeping" (separation of water from the solids). The other major companies in the pasta sauce market, Ragu and Hunt's, used starch to achieve thickness, which limited the appeal of store bought sauce for families who wanted a sauce comparable to home made. As a result of the anti-weeping innovation and smart marketing, Prego became one of the most successful grocery product launches of the early 1980s. In 2017, William M. Hildebolt, the R&D lead on Prego's development who went on to become VP of Research and Development at Campbell's, [3] published a history of Campbell Soup and the development of Prego called, It's in There!. [4]
In 1986 after growth had leveled off, Campbell's Soup consulted with Howard Moskowitz, a practitioner in the field of psychophysics. His process involved the development of variations of ingredients in the formula. After placing numeric values to testers' perception on variants, a model was created to modify recipes, maximizing perceived taste while minimizing costs. [5] Moskowitz' work systematized the process Schilling and Hildebolt had run with taste-testers during initial product development. As a result of that work, Schilling's initial recipe was materially sweetened just prior to launch, reflecting consumers' growing preference for sugary flavors and contributing to the product's immediate blockbuster success. [4]
Prego achieved over $100 million in sales and 28% market share in its first year, an astonishing accomplishment for a food brand entering an established market. Beyond the product innovations, Prego's marketing was also considered extraordinary with credit given to Laurel Cutler of Leber Katz who was brought in very early during the product's development, and Herb Baum, a Campbell's marketing director at the time, who backed an aggressive marketing and roll-out plan over the objections of other executives. [4]
The brand was involved in a controversy when it featured Clara Peller in one of its ads. The elderly woman was shown holding a gigantic prop jar of one of the meaty varieties of Prego, saying: "I finally found it!" It was a reference to her earlier work in ads for Wendy's Restaurants and the catchphrase "Where's the beef?". Wendy's had not authorized her appearance in the Prego advertisement and stopped using Peller in its campaigns. [6] [7] [8]
In March, 2024 the History Channel featured the story of the development of Prego on its show, "The Food that Built America" in the premier episode of season five. The episode is entitled, "All American Marinara". [9]
Tomato sauce can refer to many different sauces made primarily from tomatoes, usually to be served as part of a dish, rather than as a condiment. Tomato sauces are common for meat and vegetables, but they are perhaps best known as bases for sauces for Mexican salsas and Italian pasta dishes. Tomatoes have a rich flavor, high water content, soft flesh which breaks down easily, and the right composition to thicken into a sauce when stewed, without the need for thickeners such as roux or masa. All of these qualities make them ideal for simple and appealing sauces.
Clara Peller was a Russian-born American manicurist and television personality who, already an octogenarian, starred in the 1984 "Where's the beef?" advertising campaign for the Wendy's fast food restaurant chain, created by the Dancer Fitzgerald Sample advertising agency.
Pesto or more fully pesto alla genovese is a paste made of crushed garlic, pine nuts, salt, basil leaves, grated cheese such as Parmesan or pecorino sardo, and olive oil. It originated in the Italian city of Genoa, and is used to dress pasta and flavour genoese minestrone soup.
SpaghettiOs is an American brand of canned ring-shaped pasta in tomato sauce. It is marketed for children as "less messy" than regular spaghetti. More than 150 million cans of SpaghettiOs are sold each year. They are sold in tomato sauce and with additions including meatballs, pieces of processed meat resembling hot dog slices, beef-filled ravioli, and calcium-fortified spaghetti.
Peasant foods are dishes eaten by peasants, made from accessible and inexpensive ingredients.
Czech cuisine has both influenced and been influenced by the cuisines of surrounding countries and nations. Many of the cakes and pastries that are popular in Central Europe originated within the Czech lands. Contemporary Czech cuisine is more meat-based than in previous periods; the current abundance of farmable meat has enriched its presence in regional cuisine. Traditionally, meat has been reserved for once-weekly consumption, typically on weekends.
Noodle soup refers to a variety of soups with noodles and other ingredients served in a light broth. Noodle soup is a common dish across East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Himalayan states of South Asia. Various types of noodles are used, such as rice noodles, wheat noodles and egg noodles.
Pistou, or pistou sauce, is a Provençal cold sauce made from cloves of garlic, fresh basil, and olive oil and sometimes almonds, bread crumbs or potatoes. It is somewhat similar to the Ligurian sauce pesto, although it lacks pine nuts and cheese; some versions include cheese and/or almonds.
Oxtail soup is a soup made with beef tails. The use of the word "ox" in this context is a legacy of nomenclature; no specialized stock of beef animals are used and tails may come from bovines other than oxen. Different versions of oxtail soup exist: an ethnic dish of the American South which traces its lineage back to the pre-revolutionary war era; Korean; Chinese; a fried/barbecued oxtail combined with a soup variation which is a popular dish in Indonesia, where it is called sop buntut; and a thick, rich, gravy-like soup popular in the United Kingdom since the 18th century. Creole oxtail soup is made from a tomato base with oxtails, potatoes, green beans, corn, mirepoix, garlic, and herbs and spices.
Soup is a primarily liquid food, generally served warm or hot, that is made by combining ingredients of meat or vegetables with stock, milk, or water. Hot soups are additionally characterized by boiling or simmering solid ingredients in liquids in a pot until the flavors are extracted, forming a broth. Soups are similar to stews, and in some cases there may not be a clear distinction between the two; however, soups generally have more liquid (broth) than stews.
Fratelli Saclà S.p.A. is a multinational Italian food company founded by Secondo Ercole and his wife Piera Campanella in Asti, Piedmont, in north-west Italy in 1923.
The traditional cuisine of Abruzzo is eclectic, drawing on pastoral, mountain, and coastal cuisine. Staples of Abruzzo cuisine include bread, pasta, meat, fish, cheese, and wine. The isolation which has characterized the region for centuries has ensured the independence of its culinary tradition from those of nearby regions. Local cuisine was widely appreciated in a 2013 survey among foreign tourists.
Mushroom ketchup is a style of ketchup that is prepared with mushrooms as its primary ingredient. Originally, ketchup in the United Kingdom was prepared with mushrooms as a primary ingredient, instead of tomato, the main ingredient in most modern preparations of ketchup. Historical preparations involved packing whole mushrooms into containers with salt. It is used as a condiment and may be used as an ingredient in the preparation of other sauces and other condiments. Several brands of mushroom ketchup were produced and marketed in the United Kingdom, some of which were exported to the United States, and some are still manufactured as a commercial product.
Acquacotta is a hot broth-based bread soup in Italian cuisine that was originally a peasant food. Its preparation and consumption dates back to ancient history, and it originated in the coastal area known as the Maremma, in southern Tuscany and northern Lazio. The dish was invented in part as a means to make hardened, stale bread edible. In contemporary times, ingredients can vary, and additional ingredients are sometimes used. Variations of the dish include acquacotta con funghi and acquacotta con peperoni.
The capuliato or capuliatu is a traditional condiment of Sicilian cuisine based on dried tomatoes, linked, in particular to the territory of the Vittoria Plain, in free municipal consortium of Ragusa. The original name is capuliato, meaning 'minced'.
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