Chef Boyardee products sit on display in an Associated Supermarket in New York on December 22, 2003.Daniel Acker
Never heard of Anna Boiardi? Well, you might know her great-uncle Hector, the co-founder and mustachioed face of the Chef Boyardee canned pasta brand.
Ms. Boiardi, 37, has released a new cookbook of family recipes, some of which actually influenced the creation of Chef Boyardee's famous Beefaroni and canned spaghetti and meatballs, according to the New York Post.
"I wanted people to be aware that not only was there a real family, but a real culinary family behind the brand," Ms. Boiardi told the Post.
Her book, titled "Delicious Memories: Recipes and Stories From the Chef Boyardee Family," doesn't show you how to recreate the squished and slippery Beefaroni pasta pillows, but it does offer up the recipe for the original tomato sauce that launched the Italian immigrant family into a household name.
According to the Post, Ms. Boiardi's grandfather Mario and great-uncles Hector and Paul Boiardi founded the brand in 1928, calling it "Boyardee" so that American customers could easily pronounce it. It was Hector who came up with the tomato sauce at his Cleveland restaurant, and soon began selling it in milk bottles to keep up with demand.
Ms. Boiardi has carried on the family trade. She runs a culinary academy and is now planning to pitch a television show, the Post reports.
Her look back at old family recipes makes us wonder: What other factory-manufactured foods that people tend to knock these days have roots in real family meals?
Was Kraft Dinner a processed and altered version of someone's grandmother's mac 'n cheese?
Would you care to recreate Chef Boyardee food?
Wency Leung