Thanksgiving is here and there is one food that is guaranteed to make an appearance on many dinner tables today: the green bean casserole.
But, how did it become the holiday favorite that it is today?
Tampa Bay Online has taken a look at the creator of this casserole, and how it got its start.
Dorcas B. Reilly mixed and cooked and stirred and tested hundreds of recipes during the more than 25 years she worked as a home economist in the Creative Food Center for Campbell’s Soup Co.
One side dish Reilly created became a culinary cultural icon. In 1955, she reconstituted some Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, mixed in a can of green beans, stirred in some fried onions and poured it all into a casserole dish for baking.
Fifty five years later, it’s difficult to remember a time when the green bean casserole wasn’t a Thanksgiving staple. The creamy, crispy side dish became so iconic, Reilly’s recipe card became a part of the collection at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.
Now 84 and living near her two children and four grandchildren in Haddonfield, N.J., she says it took more than 20 years for her to get a sense that the dish she created and her co-workers honed had found a permanent place at the holiday table. In the mid-1970s, a Campbell’s researcher found that the recipe was the most requested in company history.
As she’s done every year since creating it, she will make the casserole for her family’s Thanksgiving meal the same classic way. Unless the test kitchen cook in her comes out.
“At one point years ago I put some carrots in with the green beans for some color,” she says. “I haven’t done that for a while, but now that you mention it. I might do that this Thanksgiving.”
Photo by Kevin Dooley