When you’re spooning some store-bought pasta sauce over a freshly cooked batch of rigatoni or spaghetti, chances are you probably aren’t thinking about the decades of innovation and industry that went into it. Sure, the history of pasta in general is filled with myth and mystery, but one of the oldest American pasta sauce brands might not be what you think. DelGrosso Foods’ sauce goes back more than a century, making it one of the most interesting names in the grocery store aisle. Declaring its company the “oldest major family-owned producer of pasta sauce in the U.S.,” the DelGrosso website describes its history as stretching back to an Italian immigrant’s recipe in the early 1900s.
Interestingly, the exact year in which the brand’s sauce began is a bit of a mystery. One part of the website says Marianna Pulcino immigrated to America in 1911 from Italy with her favored pasta sauce in tow, while another part of the company’s website says the sauce dates back to 1914. Either way, the narrative definitely makes DelGrosso one of the nation’s oldest pasta sauce brands. A close competitor would be Ragu, which traces its own pasta sauce history to another Italian immigrant’s recipe brought over in 1914. Though as fun as it is trying to determine which American pasta sauce is the oldest, the reality is that the concept of pasta sauce dates back much further when looking internationally. Besides, many pasta dishes themselves have fascinating origin stories that are centuries to thousands of years old.
Read more: The Best And Worst Barbecue Sauces To Buy At The Grocery Store
DelGrosso’s real historical legacy is being family-run
The Image Party/Shutterstock
Historical discrepancies aside, the DelGrosso pasta labels themselves say that the company is “America’s oldest family saucemaker.” That doesn’t automatically mean it is, of course, but there’s no arguing that the company has stayed in the family all these years. And that’s really the cool thing about it, as well as the company’s most important distinction, rather than simply the year it began. Despite the fact that many other family-launched food brands have eventually been sold to other companies, DelGrosso Foods is still owned by its original family and, as of the 2020s, is being run by its third generation of family members.
Per the company’s history, after Marianna Pulcino brought her sauce recipe to the United States, she opened a cafe serving up classic dishes in Altoona, Pennsylvania. However, it wasn’t until 1936 that the DelGrosso name came along, when her daughter met and eventually married railroad worker Ferdinand DelGrosso. The two of them went on to open their own restaurant and eventually started selling bottled sauce. That tradition is continued by their descendants today, and each of the brand’s premium recipes was made by a different member of the DelGrosso family.
As of 2026, DelGrosso pasta sauce can be found in stores across the country, from both large grocery stores like Walmart and Kroger to smaller regional retailers. Of course, you can always start your own family legacy by following some key tips for making homemade pasta sauce and creating something people will remember for meals to come.
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Read the original article on Chowhound.
