Truthfully, I hate SpaghettiOs. Though I prefer my pasta more tender than al dente, my spectrum of desired firmness stops well before these mushy rings. And that saccharine sauce with its metallic aftertaste only adds gustatory insult to textural injury!

Yet my inspiration for this post may be even more surprising than its existence. Until you consider that pasta e piselli is also a no-drain peasant dish, this fresh Southern Italian classic seems unlikely to inspire any cook to tackle SpaghettiOs next.

My brain plays a curious, however explainable, game of association sometimes.

SpaghettiOs and Reverse-Engineering

Studying a can of this iconic Campbell’s product justified my questionable neural firings. Almost immediately, I realized it could provide a comparatively straightforward example of my reverse-engineering process. (Have you read the circuitous path I traveled to copy Country Crock Homestyle Dairy Free Heavy Whipping Cream?)

Basic Reverse-Engineering Process

To me, reverse-engineering recipes is no different than more traditional engineering projects. I essentially follow the DBTI framework: Design, Build, Test, Improve.

DESIGN

1. Read the Ingredients list and predetermine substitutions.

The Ingredients list for SpaghettiOs is as follows. (I reformatted sub-lists to distinguish them more clearly from main ingredients.)

WATER, TOMATO PUREE (Water, Tomato Paste), ENRICHED PASTA (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, Contains Less Than 2% Of: SALT, ENZYME MODIFIED CHEDDAR CHEESE (Cheddar Cheese [Cultured Pasteurized Milk, Salt, Enzymes], Water, Salt, Milkfat, Disodium Phosphate, Enzymes, Xanthan Gum), VEGETABLE OIL (Corn, Canola, And/Or Soybean), BETA CAROTENE, CITRIC ACID, PAPRIKA EXTRACT, ONION EXTRACT, NATURAL FLAVORING

Many of these ingredients – water, tomato paste, pasta, salt, and vegetable oil – are available in supermarkets. Others, however – high fructose corn syrup and enzyme modified cheddar cheese for examples – are commercial ingredients. Home cooks can order them! But for a convenience food like SpaghettiOs, to do so is to take this project too far.

Here’s my vegan- and grocery store-friendly version of the same list:

WATER, TOMATO PUREE (Water, Tomato Paste), PASTA, SUGAR, SALT, NUTRITIONAL YEAST, VEGETABLE OIL, TURMERIC, PAPRIKA, ONION POWDER

I omitted citric acid because tomato paste often contains it. Moreover, since I can’t even guess which natural flavors are added, I opted to address the Je ne sais quoi of SpaghettiOs during the Improve stage.

2. Reference the Nutrition Facts for anchor weights.

a. Added Sugars

The most incontestable number on a Nutrition Facts label is Added Sugars. While Total Carbohydrate includes sugars from natural sources, Added Sugars isolates what was, well…added.

That’s simply high fructose corn syrup in SpaghettiOs! And there are 11 g of it per can.

From here, let’s consider the properties of our granulated sugar substitute. Granulated sugar is about as sweet as high fructose corn syrup, and weighs 12 g per Tbsp (15 mL). We therefore need slightly less than 1 Tbsp (15 mL) per can we recreate.

b. Total Fat

Unfortunately, there is no Added Fat number. All is not lost however! Though fat exists in pasta, the only significant source of fat in SpaghettiOs is vegetable oil.

Oils weigh 14 g per Tbsp (15 mL); there are 3 tsp (5 mL ea) in a Tbsp; a can of SpaghettiOs contains 2.5 g fat. Conclusion: Each can includes about ½ tsp (2.5 mL/g) of vegetable oil.

c. Sodium

Just as there are natural sources of sugar, there are natural sources of sodium including tomato paste. Yet just as there is no Added Fat number, there is no Added Sodium number.

I approach how much salt to use by rounding down. A can of SpaghettiOs contains 1,010 mg sodium, and my go-to salt Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt contains 280 mg per ¼ tsp (1.25 mL).

I thus started with ½ tsp (2.5 mL) per can.

3. Search the entire package for other numbers.

a. Advertisements

To be sure, healthwashing can be annoying. “Whole grain is the first ingredient,” on a box of Lucky Charms does nothing to change that it contains about 20% marshmallows.

But it helps us here! SpaghettiOs boasts ½-cup (120-mL) serving of vegetables per can. Since its only notable source of vegetables is tomato paste – Onion extract doesn’t count. – and tomato paste is ½ cup (120 mL) of tomatoes concentrated into 2 Tbsp (30 mL)…

There are 2 Tbsp (30 mL) of tomato paste in every can of SpaghettiOs!

b. Calories

33 g of tomato paste = 35 Calories
11 g of sugar = 41.3
2.7 g nutritional yeast = 11.7
2.5 g vegetable oil = 20

Water, salt, and spices contribute practically nothing calorically. Pasta does though! In order to hit 300 Calories per can of SpaghettiOs, about 200 must come from the Os themselves which is a neat, 2-oz (56-g) serving of anelli or anelletti pasta.

c. Net Weight

A can of SpaghettiOs weighs 15.8 oz (448 g). Referencing the previous section, we have roughly 4 oz (exactly 105.2 g) of ingredients. The remaining 12 oz (343 g) is mostly water. (Spices contribute little weight.)

I thus calculated water using a 3:1 ratio of water to other ingredients.

4. Fill in the blanks.

At this point, we need to resort to guesswork. There are no numbers left to reference how much turmeric, paprika, and onion powder to use! Less than 2.5 g (since they’re listed after vegetable oil) is still a lot for these light powders.

I started with 2 tsp (10 mL) each.

BUILD

5. Write a theoretical recipe.

My first draft read as follows. (I ultimately adjusted ingredients with an asterisk during the Test and Improve stages.)

1 6-oz (170-g) can tomato paste
¼ cup (60 mL/48 g) granulated sugar*
2 Tbsp (30 mL/17g) kosher salt
1 Tbsp (15 mL/14 g) neutral-flavored oil
3 Tbsp (45 mL/12 g) nutritional yeast*
2 tsp (10 mL) dried ground turmeric*
2 tsp (10 mL) paprika*
2 tsp (10 mL) onion powder*
8 cups (about 2 L/2,014 g) water*
1 lb (454 g) pastina, or “little pasta”

TEST

6. Perform a practical test of the theoretical recipe. Take notes (including pictures), and ask questions.

I quickly determined my prototype lacked sweetness compared to the original product. My daughter also described it as “not tomato-y enough” which I suspected was from too much turmeric and other spices.

too-thick test batch of vegan SpaghettiOs

Moreover, it wasn’t watery enough! SpaghettiOs walks the line between heavily sauced pasta and soup, but mine was regularly sauced pasta.

I needed more tomato flavor, more depth from nutritional yeast (and perhaps brown sugar), and more water. I also needed to make a technical decision: Should I boil everything together to keep this dish easy, or should I build flavor by toasting spices in oil?

IMPROVE

7. Revisit Steps 1-6 as necessary.

Thankfully, my family adores pasta! Despite all the conviction I had in my calculations, we collectively ate at least three dozen servings of homemade SpaghettiOs as I tweaked and tweaked again…and again.

The key to success during this stage is changing one variable at a time. Toward the end, I wasn’t even changing ingredients but pitting techniques against each other!

Is it better to special order ingredients and build flavor? maybe. Yet the appeal of SpaghettiOs lies more in their accessibility than their flavor. Eventually, I reached a point where this project ceased to be measurable and demanded consideration of the problems it was made to solve.

My final recipe, therefore, is as close to heat-and-eat as it reasonably can be.