How Were Pizza Rolls Invented?

The pizza roll, like fellow frozen food veteran the tater tot, is so obviously processed and artificial that it wraps back around and almost starts to seem natural. Logically, of course, pizza rolls had to be invented by somebody — but how? Who looked at a slice of pepperoni pizza, stroked their chin, and said to themselves, "This would be much better if it were a mini turnover, and also perhaps sold by Vanessa Bayer in various surreal sketches on Saturday Night Live?" (Okay, they probably didn't say that last bit.)

It may not surprise you to learn that pizza rolls were brought into the world in part by an Italian-American frozen food executive named Jeno Paulucci. Despite his delightfully Italian name, Paulucci actually ran a company that sold Chinese food. Paulucci's company, Chun King, was an early innovator in the field of frozen Chinese food, selling chop suey and chow mein to shoppers all across America. (No word on if it measured up to Trader Joe's Mandarin Orange Chicken.) Eventually, Paulucci started to sell miniature frozen egg rolls, made by a machine invented by one Eugene Luoma, whose sister, Beatrice Ojakangas, worked as a cook for Chun King. This egg roll machine would ultimately become instrumental in the invention of the pizza roll.

While Jeno Paulucci was planning on selling the company during the 1960s, he wanted to retain the rights to the egg roll machine and ordered Beatrice Ojakangas to come up with another product that the machine could make — something that could be wrapped in wonton skin and fried. She came up with a list of over 50 ideas, including cheeseburger rolls, Reuben rolls, and peanut butter and jelly rolls (we sincerely hope she used the supreme ratio). A few of those ideas involved pizza ingredients like pepperoni and tomato sauce, and as soon as Paulucci tasted them he knew it was an idea he could ride to the moon.

Paulucci eventually sold Chun King and pursued "Jeno's Pizza Rolls," which he ultimately sold to Pillsbury for $135 million in the mid-'80s, folding them into the pre-existing Totino's brand of frozen pizza. So, Totino's Pizza Rolls came to be. Ojakangas, despite getting little credit for the invention, became a beloved chef in her own right. The Minnesota native has been referred to as "the Scandinavian Julia Child" — although, as Ojakangas is Finnish-American, "the Nordic Julia Child" would be more accurate.