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Angelo Pellegrini (1904 – 1991) was an author of books about the pleasures of growing and making your own food and wine, and about the Italian immigrant experience. He was also a professor of English Literature at the University of Washington. Pellegrini's family immigrated from Tuscany to McCleary, Washington in 1913 where his father worked for the railroad. His first book, The Unprejudiced Palate (1948) is an important work in the history of food literature and as of 2008 remains in print.

In 1946, Sunset Magazine published Pellegrini's recipe for pesto, likely the first major publication of a pesto recipe in the United States. Two years earlier the New York Times had first mentioned the sauce, referring to an imported canned pesto paste. The sauce was not immediately embraced by the American public and did not rise in popularity until the 1980's and 1990s.