Campbell’s condensed soup dates to 1897, when a young chemist named John T. Dorrance worked out how to take the water out of soup. A year later, in 1898, the red-and-white can that still lines pantry shelves made its first appearance.
The brand’s path runs from a Camden, New Jersey, canning shop to an art gallery in Los Angeles, where Andy Warhol showed 32 canvases of soup cans in 1962.
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From Anderson and Campbell to Camden’s Soup Maker
The company began in 1869, when fruit merchant Joseph A. Campbell and icebox maker Abraham Anderson started canning tomatoes, vegetables, jellies, soups, condiments and minced meats, according to Wikipedia. Anderson left in 1876, and the business became the Joseph A. Campbell Preserve Company.
The profile of Campbell on Cook’s Info says an early bestseller was “Beefsteak Ketchup,” a sauce closer to Worcestershire than to modern tomato ketchup. Campbell retired in 1894, and Arthur Dorrance became president.
A winter project can pair well with a soup supper, such as one of these 7 cozy crafts. Readers who enjoy old-fashioned pantry stories may also like this list of odd American traditions, some of which involve food.
1897: Dorrance Halves the Water
John T. Dorrance, nephew of the company’s president, joined in 1897 at $7.50 a week. Wikipedia says the chemist later developed a way of condensing soup by halving its water content.
The idea mattered because of the can. Removing water cut packaging and shipping costs, as Cook’s Info explains, and the first condensed soup was tomato. A Tasting Table history adds that condensing made cans smaller and cut the price from 30 cents to 10 cents.
The company had already sold ready-to-eat soup. Tasting Table notes that Beefsteak Tomato arrived in 1895 as its first canned ready-to-eat soup, and that the label read “When heated the contents of this can are ready for use.” Condensing changed the economics, since a shopper added water at home.
By 1900, Cook’s Info says, the condensed tomato soup won a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition, and a can sold for 10 cents while rivals’ uncondensed soups cost more than 30 cents.
1898: The Red-and-White Can Arrives
The look that people recognize today arrived in 1898. Shoppers who stock a pantry may also want to see which foods are said never to be worth buying at Walmart. Wikipedia reports that executive Herberton Williams persuaded the company to adopt a carnelian red and bright white color scheme, inspired by Cornell football uniforms.
Tasting Table puts it more cautiously, saying that according to lore an executive took the colors from Cornell’s uniforms. Either way, the label debuted that year. Household history buffs can skim the 9 telephones that rang in American homes for a similar look back. A 1900 gold medal seal from the Paris Exhibition was later added to the can design.
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The Soup Behind a Thanksgiving Side Dish
The same soup shaped a holiday staple. According to the Wikipedia entry on green bean casserole, Dorcas Reilly created the recipe in 1955 in the home economics department of Campbell’s in Camden. It was made for an Associated Press feature as a quick dish built from ingredients most households already had.
The recipe first appeared on soup cans as “Green Bean Bake.” Campbell’s printed it on the can label, and it became a Thanksgiving fixture in the 1960s. The core recipe uses green beans, cream of mushroom soup and crisp fried onions.
The company estimates that 40% of its cream of mushroom soup sales go into the dish and that it shows up in about 20 million Thanksgiving dinners each year. Those are company figures. In 2002, Reilly donated the original recipe card to the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Warhol’s 32 Canvases in 1962
The can became art in 1962. According to Wikipedia’s page on the series, Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans consist of 32 canvases, each 20 by 16 inches and each showing a different soup variety. They were completed by June 1962.
The show opened July 9, 1962, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. Warhol did not attend, and there was no formal opening. The canvases hung in a single row on narrow ledges, like groceries on a shelf.
Only five or six paintings sold at first. Gallery owner Irving Blum then contacted the buyers, who gave up their purchases, and he bought the full set himself for $1,000, paid in ten monthly installments of $100.
The Museum of Modern Art acquired the set in October 1996 for about $15 million. In 1965, Warhol made 20 larger multicolored canvases titled Colored Campbell’s Soup Cans.
What the Timeline Shows
Put side by side, the dates tell a clear story. The company began in 1869, the condensing method arrived in 1897 and the red-and-white label followed in 1898. Twenty-four years after the label arrived, in 1922, the business formally became the Campbell Soup Company, and Dorrance served as its president from 1914 until 1930.
The 1955 casserole and the 1962 canvases show how far a pantry staple can travel, from a Camden factory to a holiday table and a museum wall. The soup that began as a cost-saving idea in 1897 is now both a pantry basic and a pop art subject, with each date in the timeline leaving a visible mark.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Mike Mozart – CC BY 2.0/Wikimedia Commons
