Green bean casserole was invented in 1955, but it’s not the dish it used to be

Green bean casserole started decades ago with canned green beans, when Campbell’s home economists in Camden, New Jersey, answered an Associated Press reporter’s call for a side dish made from common pantry ingredients. Home cooks have since reworked it, making the sauce from scratch and both adding and subtracting ingredients. The current Campbell’s recipe still uses cream of mushroom soup and French-fried onions, but this humble recipe offers much more. In 1955 , home economist Dorcas Reilly and her team at Campbell’s tested fresh and frozen green beans, canned lima beans, peas, corn and mixed vegetables for a vegetable side dish. The canned cut green beans won the internal taste test. The first version, called Green Bean Bake, had six ingredients , including a can of French’s fried onions and canned green beans, which Campbell’s did not make. The AP ran the recipe nationally without attaching it to any holiday. A soup can label came before the Thanksgiving tradition Campbell’s, which still sells the soup many recipes call for, sells nearly 40 million cans of cream of mushroom soup during the holiday period. That figure counts overall soup sales, and the release does not say how many cans go into the casserole. Green bean casseroles appear on more than half of Thanksgiving tables nationally. Campbell’s introduced cream of mushroom soup in 1934 , 21 years before Reilly’s recipe. The company later renamed the recipe green bean casserole and promoted it in pamphlets. The dish became a Thanksgiving favorite in the 1960s , after Campbell’s printed the recipe on the label of its soup can. Reilly’s recipe became the company’s most requested ever Green bean casserole is still the most requested recipe in company history. Campbell’s and Reilly donated the recipe to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. The hall moved the aged 8-by-11-inch recipe into its archives for long-term preservation. Reilly graduated from Drexel in 1947 after growing up in Camden, near Campbell’s headquarters. She taught homemakers to use electric ranges for a local utility before Campbell’s hired her in 1949 , when it revived its home economics department, and she was one of the first full-time members of what is now the Test Kitchen. Among her other creations was a tomato soup spice cake, which stayed popular into the early 1960s. The current recipe still uses 6 ingredients The recipe calls for green beans , cream of mushroom soup, soy sauce, black pepper, milk and French-fried onions. For years, a food-styling rule kept the onions around the edges of the casserole rather than the center. Campbell’s dropped the rule in the past decade, and the onions can now cover the whole dish. Campbell’s lists a bacon-and-cheddar version and the method also works with broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. A Parmesan fried onion topping keeps the canned soup but starts with fresh blanched beans. Snap beans raised for processing are concentrated in one state. Wisconsin grew 243,531 of the 458,307 tons raised in 2025, more than half of the national total, federal figures show. Oregon ranked second with 43,413 tons, followed by Illinois and New York with 40,490 and 35,803 tons. Most cooks keep the original, though some skip the can Most cooks would leave the green bean casserole alone. Only 19% would change the recipe in a survey of 5,017 U.S. adults who celebrate Thanksgiving, the lowest share among the top five sides. The survey’s top five sides have ranked the same way for three years, with green bean casserole first. The same survey found that 67% say the casserole reminds them of Thanksgivings past and 69% say it is best made with cream of mushroom or cream of celery soup. Many home cooks adjust recipes to suit their families’ tastes, and the casserole is no exception. Some people skip the can instead, making the sauce from milk thickened with flour. It replaces the French-fried onions with crispy fried shallots and uses the leftover shallot oil to cook the mushrooms. It calls for a mix of mushrooms such as cremini and oyster and adds Parmesan and nutmeg. The from-scratch version can be done a day early Cooks who choose the from-scratch route can finish most of the work before Thanksgiving Day. The casserole can be assembled and refrigerated up to a day ahead, and the crispy shallots can be made a day early too. On Thanksgiving Day, the casserole only needs to come to room temperature and bake. Jennifer Allen is a retired professional chef and long-time writer. Her work appears in dozens of publications, including MSN, Yahoo, The Washington Post and The Seattle Times. These days, she’s busy developing recipes in the kitchen and traveling the world, and you can find all her best creations at Cook What You Love . 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