Why Is Green Bean Casserole a Thanksgiving Food?

Remind Staff
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On Thanksgiving, you’ll likely encounter (and eat) some incredibly nostalgic dishes. Time seems to stand still when it comes to Turkey Day foods — we’re all still gobbling down the same Thanksgiving classics we ate when we were kids, like cranberry sauce (bonus points if it is still shaped like the can it came in!), sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, buttery rolls, mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. But so many of these foods, while beloved, are only eaten one day a year. How and when did these foods come to be considered “Thanksgiving specialties”?

For green bean casserole, the answer isn’t wholly straightforward — but it involves a soup can.

Green bean casserole is generally made of just six basic ingredients: one can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, green beans, milk, soy sauce, pepper and those crunchy fried onions. That ingredient list should be a hint about where the recipe originated from — a Campbell’s Soup employee named Dorcas Reilly.

Reilly worked as a supervisor at the home economics department of Campbell’s test kitchen in Camden, New Jersey. In 1955, she was given an assignment to create a dish for a story in the Associated Press. The challenge? It had to involve ingredients that many families would have ready on hand, including Campbell’s mushroom soup and green beans.

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Reilly wanted to create something easy for anyone to make cheaply at home. She and her team test-drove a few versions of the recipe, including one with ham and celery salt, but ultimately landed on the green bean casserole that you know and love, which was originally called Green Bean Bake.

Reilly later admitted that she was shocked that the dish became so well known. She said, “We all thought this is very nice, etc., and then when we got the feelings of the consumer, we were really kinda pleasantly shocked. I’m very proud of this, and I was shocked when I realized how popular it had become.”

 

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Reilly’s casserole, however, was originally pitched to busy moms as a good weeknight dish. It only became associated with Thanksgiving once it began to be printed on the side of cans of cream of mushroom soup in the 1960s. Its cheap ingredients meant that it could be made in great quantities without breaking the bank — perfect for a Thanksgiving meal.

Today, Reilly’s contribution to Thanksgiving has achieved a place of honor — her handwritten recipe card now resides in the archives of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Now tell us, do you love or hate green bean casserole? What is your favorite Thanksgiving dish?

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