Green bean casserole

Green bean casseroleis an American baked dish consisting primarily ofgreen beans,cream of mushroom soup, andfrench fried onions. It was popularized in the USA from a recipe printed on a soup can starting in the 1950s.
It is a popularside dishforThanksgiving dinnersin the United States and has been described asiconic.The recipe was created in 1955 byDorcas Reillyat theCampbell Soup Company.  As of 2020, Campbell's estimated it was served in 20 million Thanksgiving dinners in the US each year and that 40% of the company's cream of mushroom soup sales go into a version of the dish.
Campbell's cream of mushroom soup was created in 1955 and was the first of the company's soups to be marketed as a sauce as well as a soup.It became so widely used ascasserolefiller in thehotdishrecipes popular in Minnesota, where Lutheranism is a popular religion, that it was sometimes referred to as "Lutheran binder".Like other food companies, Campbell's employed recipe developers to create recipes using their products as part of their marketing strategy.
Dorcas Reilly(1926–2018) created the recipe in 1955 while working in thehome economicsdepartment at the Campbell's Soup Company inCamden, New Jersey.The recipe was created for a feature article for the Associated Press; the requirement was for a quick and easy dish using ingredients most US households kept on hand.
It was called "Green Bean Bake" when the recipe was first printed on soup cans.Initially the dish did not test well within the company but, in part because of Reilly's persistence, eventually earned a reputation for being "the ultimatecomfort food".Culinary historianLaura Shapirocalled the recipe's use of the crunchy fried onion topping a "touch of genius" that gave an otherwise ordinary convenience-food side dish a bit of "glamour".
Food & Winecalled it iconic, andGood Housekeepingsaid that "few dishes are as iconic" as the green bean casserole.
It was originally marketed as an everyday side dish but became popular for Thanksgiving dinners in the 1960s after Campbell's placed the recipe on the can's label.The recipe popularized the combination of the soup with green beans. Campbell's Soup nowestimates that 40 percent of the Cream of Mushroom soup sold in the United States goes into making green bean casserole.As of 2020 Campbell's estimated it was served in 20 million Thanksgiving dinners in the US each year.Campbell's in 2020 reported their online version of the recipe is viewed 4 million times each Thanksgiving Day.According to Campbell's as of 2018, the recipe is the most popular ever developed in their kitchens.
FolkloristLucy Longin 2007 noted that its inclusion on Thanksgiving dinner tables crosses ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious differences.She also notes it is included in most popular American cookbooks, mentioned in the media regularly, and referred to a "classic", "traditional", and "a Thanksgiving standard".She wrote that the popularity of the dish was related to its categorization as a casserole, which in the US is associated with "communal eating, sharing, and generosity" and that the green bean casserole in particular represents the familiar and also the festive.
The currentrecipe calls for green beans, mushroom soup, milk,soy sauce, groundblack pepper, andfrench fried onions.The beans, soup, milk, and seasonings are mixed together with a portion of the onions and baked, then topped with more onions and baked for another few minutes.
Multiple similar recipes were developed to "update" or "upgrade" the original recipe to use fresh beans, homemade cream sauce, and fresh mushrooms as the convenience-food based recipes of the 1950s and 1960s became less fashionable, but according to culinary historian Shapiro, the green bean casserole remains popular for Thanksgiving for reasons of nostalgia.Other recipes have been developed, by Campbell's and others, that incorporate a variety of methods and ingredients in addition to or in replacement of those in the original.
In November of 2002, Reilly, representing Campbell's, donated the original recipe card to theNational Inventors Hall of FameinAkron, Ohio.The donation was followed by a meal featuring the dish.Reilly died 15 October of 2018 at the age of 92 in her hometown ofCamden, New Jersey.