📜 Origin story
Who Invented Green Bean Casserole?
Thanksgiving's most famous casserole started as a quick test-kitchen recipe for a newspaper feature. Even the woman credited with it was modest about the credit.
By Americanized · Edited by JP Lambiase · October 20, 2026
It is credited to Dorcas Reilly and the Campbell test kitchen. In 1955 Reilly, a supervisor in the company's home economics kitchen in Camden, New Jersey, combined green beans, cream of mushroom soup and fried onions for an Associated Press feature. The recipe went on the soup can label and became a Thanksgiving staple in the 1960s.
A recipe for a news feature
Wikipedia says the Associated Press wanted a quick dish made from things most households kept on hand, and the request landed in the soup company's kitchen in Camden. Mental Floss describes the AP piece as a 1955 Thanksgiving story. The AP's own 2018 obituary of Reilly says she was a kitchen supervisor there in 1955, and that she worked for the company on and off from the late 1940s until she retired as kitchen manager in 1988.
The first version was simple. Mental Floss lists it as one can of cream of mushroom soup, half a cup of milk, a teaspoon of soy sauce, a dash of pepper, four cups of green beans and 1 1/3 cups of French fried onions, half of them saved for the top.
From the can label to the holiday table
The recipe was printed on soup cans as Green Bean Bake. Wikipedia says it did not test well inside the company at first, then became a Thanksgiving fixture in the 1960s once it sat on the label. In 2020 Campbell's estimated the dish was served at 20 million American Thanksgiving dinners a year and that 40 percent of its cream of mushroom soup sales went into it, Wikipedia reports. Those are the company's own estimates, not an independent count.
Credited to Dorcas Reilly and the Campbell test kitchen
Reilly is the name attached to the dish, and the company called it the most popular recipe ever to come out of its corporate kitchen, the AP reported. But in a 2005 AP interview for the recipe's 50th anniversary, Reilly said she "didn't remember having a hand in it," because the kitchen turned out hundreds of recipes in those years.
That is why the careful answer credits both: Dorcas Reilly and the Campbell test kitchen. In 2002 the original recipe card went to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio. Reilly died on October 15, 2018, at 92.
Fresh beans or canned?
The original card just says four cups of green beans, and plenty of cooks still use canned or frozen. America's Test Kitchen, rebuilding the dish from scratch in 2007, found fresh beans necessary and made the sauce like a French velouté, with browned mushrooms, broth and cream. It kept store-bought crispy fried onions on top for convenience.
Our green bean casserole from scratch follows that version. Serve it with Parker House rolls and the rest of our Thanksgiving sides.
Questions people ask
What was green bean casserole originally called?
Green Bean Bake. That was the name printed on the soup cans in the 1950s, according to Wikipedia and Mental Floss.
Can you make green bean casserole ahead?
Yes. America's Test Kitchen says the beans and sauce, assembled in the dish without the topping, keep 24 hours in the refrigerator, and the crumb topping keeps 2 days. Bake the cold casserole 10 minutes at 425°F before adding the topping, then finish baking until it bubbles and reaches 165°F in the center.
Where is the original green bean casserole recipe card?
At the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio. Dorcas Reilly's handwritten card was donated in 2002, the Associated Press reported.
Parts of this history are disputed. Where sources disagree, we say so.
Sources
- Shawn Marsh, "Woman who created green bean casserole dies at 92," Associated Press (via ABC News 4), October 24, 2018
- Wikipedia, "Green bean casserole"
- Michele Debczak, "Serving Green Bean Casserole at Thanksgiving? Dorcas Reilly's Original Recipe Is Still the Best," Mental Floss, updated November 16, 2022
- America's Test Kitchen, "Green Bean Casserole" (2007)
More food facts
Cook it
Green Bean Casserole from Scratch
The 1955 test-kitchen classic rebuilt from scratch: blanched fresh green beans in a homemade mushroom cream sauce, under buttered bread crumbs and crispy fried onions, baked hot until bubbling.
Parker House Rolls
Soft, buttery pull-apart dinner rolls from the Boston hotel that made them famous: an egg and milk dough, folded over a brush of melted butter so each roll has a lip, baked golden and brushed again.
Jellied Cranberry Sauce, Canned Style
A smooth, sliceable cranberry jelly cooked in cranberry juice, strained, and set in a clean can so it slides out with the ridges. Inspired by Ocean Spray's canned jellied cranberry sauce. Not official.
Sweet Potato Casserole with Marshmallows
Sweet potatoes cooked down in butter and cream instead of water, mashed with a little cream cheese, then covered with halved marshmallows and baked in a hot oven until they puff and brown.
Classic Roast Thanksgiving Turkey
The plain American centerpiece: a buttered, salted and peppered turkey roasted breast side down first, flipped, and finished breast side up until the thermometer reads 165°F. No basting, no fuss.