Green bean casserole a tradition since 1955

[wargarden]

For those in the UK. Many thanksgiving dinner s in USA include this casserole.
I was born in 1950's like many convenience food recipes were as a way the
have people make dishes from the many new can goods that were available
after WW2. Created by Campbell Test Kitchen Manager Dorcas Reilly in 1955.
the way my family makes it is 4 cups green bean /fresh or frozen per 10.5 can Campbell's
cream mushroom soup. put in casserole dish mix thoroughly. bake 350f for hour- hours
then sprinkle french fried onion on top then bake minute till onions brown.
then serve hot. other thanks given staples.
ps you can use the low fat or low salt versions of mushroom soup in the recipe.
PSPS sadly they do not sell those UK.

[earthmaiden]

Had this at Thanksgiving in the USA and loved it. Also loved the candied yams with marshmallow. I didn't think I'd like either very much - both were good for the cold pickings later too .

Campbells recipes really hit the market at just the tight time didn't they!

[Prettykiwicrazy]

How can you specify a cooking time from an hour - hours ? Either it takes an hour or multiples of an hour ? I’ve never tried myself but it doesn’t appeal . I hate tinned mushroom soup and like my green beans simply boiled /steamed with brighter , more interesting flavours

[wargarden]

the cook time depends on if you use fresh,frozen or canned green beans . Also how big the
casserole dish is and how many cups of green beans and soup mix you use.

[Prettykiwicrazy]

Surely if you’re making it , you’d cook your frozen or fresh beans till done then add to the casserole dish , rather than adding them raw/frozen so their origins wouldn’t make a difference ? And you stated the amount of beans and soup already ?

I can’t see that beans and soup would even take an hour ? Surely the cooking time is just to heat everything through and thicken the soup up maybe

[StokeySue]

The current Campbell’s recipe does specify “cooked” green beans but I think it has been modified over the last 60 odd years



I used to use Campbell’s condensed soups as an ingredient in quite a few things, and I’m annoyed that they no longer sell the Beef Consommé in the UK as made up with an extra can of water it was an excellent strong beef stock/broth for things like French Onion Soup

Going back to cooking terms that confuse it’s not a casserole in British English, but a bake or gratin. A casserole here is a stew cooked in a lidded vessel in the oven, though I think the US usage is creeping in here

[wargarden]

StokeySue you can bake it under lid for first 55 minutes till put you onions on

[northleedsbhoy]

I actually shudder at the thought of eating green bean casserole , it's much the same to me as having cauliflower cheese with a roast dinner - don't get me wrong I love cauliflower cheese but it's the thought of chees sauce and gravy mixing on the same plate

Cheers
NLB

[suffolk]

I feel exactly the same NLB ... IMHO cauliflower cheese is a dish to be eaten with a jacket potato or a piece of grilled/fried chicken or a bacon chop or similar

I just don’t get the attraction of a cheese sauce with gravy (and yes, I have tried it )

[earthmaiden]

When I were a lass, cauliflower, when accompanying a meat meal was always served with white sauce and not just in our house. I didn't see it served plain until I met future MIL. That seems normal, but cheese sauce extravagant - that's a meal in itself. .

(if calories are no problem, the most delicious way to have cauliflower cheese is with crispy bacon and triangles of bread fried in the bacon fat ).

[suffolk]

Precisely EM ... two proteins in one meal was 'extravagance' when I was a child ... in fact, it was probably 'sinful'.

[StokeySue]

[suffolk]

Looking carefully at the original recipe as given in the first post, to me that is simply an assemblage of branded convenience foods ... obviously developed as a marketing ploy ... it doesn't fit with my understanding of 'cooking'.

Can anyone think of a traditional UK dish which was originally developed by a Product Developer in a test kitchen ...?

[StokeySue]

I can’t think of anything so high profile but I find that the All Bran Fruit Loaf is surprisingly recurrent

[earthmaiden]

I was thinking of all the recipes on the side of cereal packets too. There were quite a few using corn flakes for cakey things and crumb coatings. I suppose Kelloggs are not really British though! Surely most of the big processed/convenience food manufacturers came out if the USA anyway? Campbell's recipes came just at the time when housewives wanted convenience. Clever marketing , especially to nail a Thanksgiving dish! Nothing quite like it for our Christmas - though packet bread sauce, Aunt Bessie products, Bisto, frozen veg etc transformed many tables . The advent of store prepared pigs in blankets seems quite recent. Chipolatas and bacon rolls (rolled rashers, not bread rolls!) served separately were surely more traditonal.

[Pepper Pig]

In this house we often have really good sausages served with cauliflower cheese. It works for us!

[earthmaiden]

[Seatallan]

I love cauliflower with white sauce. It goes really well with roast gammon I think.

When I was a child we often had (home-grown) marrow with white sauce to accompany a roast dinner. And lovely it was. But I agree that a cheesy sauce is an ingredient too far with a roast.

[earthmaiden]

We sometimes had fried marrow in white sauce with sausages and potatoes (with the sausage fat as the fat element in the sauce so it had tasty bits from the pan in it). Oh yum (sigh).

[suffolk]

[scullion]

[liketocook]

Cauliflower or other veg in white sauce for Sunday roast dinners that involved gravy here but with cheese sauce if it was roast ham.
Would "Coronation chicken" count as a developed dish?

[liketocook]

[suffolk]

Pretty sure Coronation chicken wasn’t constructed almost solely from packets/tins/jars of branded foods.

[StokeySue]

I think Coronation Chicken, which was invented by Rosemary Hume to feed one of the lunch parties that was part of the actual coronation, fits into a different tradition of dishes created and named for an event or a celebrity. For example Peach Melba, which Escoffier created for Dame Nellie Melba, though he did later sell jars of Melba sauce. Similarly the Pavlova meringue cake, Oysters Rockefeller or Bananas Foster. Cherries Jubilee?
I suspect desserts are easy to tweak to someone’s taste then rename.
I think there may be things that started that way but have become generic perhaps peanut butter cookies? Pink fluff - jelly made with evaporated milk and whipped? Some of the Philadelphia cream cheese recipes maybe??

[Badger's mate]

There used to be a Guinness cake iirc, promoted by the brewery. Mrs B did it for me one birthday in our early days. From time to time companies produced recipe leaflets, Kelloggs and Sun-Pat spring to mind. The obvious UK example would be Be-Ro but they were giving recipes for what their product was meant to be used in, rather than repurposed.

I can't think of a good British example.

[wargarden]

interesting about names in dish names. but can you guess who chicken al king was named after.
actual king/ monark or a man whose last name was "king "
I can tell you one thing about chicken a la king the version now served is nothing like original.
Since my database recipes an there origins the original chicken a la king had truffles in it,.

[liketocook]

Thought I was pushing it with "Coronation Chicken"

[Seatallan]

[suffolk]

It seems that no one knows for certain http://www.foodreference.com/html/artch ... aking.html

[StokeySue]

King is not a rare surname ( for example Billie Jean King) so I’m guessing Chicken à la King is named for some Mr or Ms King?

But who, whether chef or celeb, no idea

[karadekoolaid]

Green bean casserole. A curious mixture of tinned veg cooked to death, IMHO - but everyone to their own. I mean, how do the Italians view us eating tinned spaghetti (or ravioli) on toast? What do Mexicans think of Taco Bell?

[earthmaiden]

What does anyone think of Taco Bell for that matter? (but spaghetti/ravioli etc on toast are different - childhood comfort food )

[StokeySue]

I tried canned spaghetti some time ago. Disgusting now, my taste buds have changed in the last half century. Always a bit of a puzzle as I love baked beans but the sauce is so acidic I’m surprised it doesn’t etch the plate

[northleedsbhoy]

Comfort food when me and my sister were young and under the weather was Heinz tomato soup with a a tin af Heinz spaghetti added to the soup, it made us feel better.

Cheers
NLB

[karadekoolaid]

Basic diet for me, Northleedsboy, was ravioli on toast before a cricket match!

[wargarden]

i saw some mexican eat at taco bell when visited Texas.

[Seatallan]

I've never tried taco bell. Mr S has a secret hankering for KFC but I'm not keen on it (so occasionally he indulges himself with a Bargain Bucket ). I do like the occasional Burger King burger however- I think they're easily the best of the chain burger companies. I also like Costa bacon rolls.

I used to adore tinned Heinz Spaghetti Hoops when I was a child and I still love Baked Beans on toast with grated cheese on top.

Talking of convenience foods, what about chocolate Angel Delight over tinned pears? That's still one of my favorite puds.

[suffolk]

Now there we have to differ Seatallen ... IMHO chocolate Angel Delight Butterscotch is the only edible flavour.

[StokeySue]

Taco Bell had a few UK outlets years ago, then disappeared to return recently

I occasionally used to get lunch from the Taco Bell near my office 20 years ago, not authentic Mexican or even Tex-Mex I don’t suppose, but edible and more to my taste than KFC or McD’s. As far as I could remember quite similar to Taco Bell in California 20 years before that!

[earthmaiden]

MIL used to do choc blancmange in individual dishes, each topped with a tinned pear half, for Sunday tea.

[suffolk]

Choc blancmange is even worse than choc Angel Delight ....... it's the skin

But I love vanilla junket

[StokeySue]

Can’t do junket - that texture is love it or hate it

I’ve had tinned pears with chocolate custard aka blancmange still warm and runny

[scullion]

hot chocolate sauce (custard based) on vanilla ice cream was one of the favourite puddings at school - as were big bowls of cold apple puree with a massive slab of shortbread.
butterscotch angel delight, here, too (i think we've had that discussion a few times, now!).

[earthmaiden]

scully, we had the most delicious caramel flavoured custard (hot) with ice cream. I have never seen any commercial custard powder with quite that flavour.

Oooh, junket. Plain with lots of nutmeg on top. We used to make it at home using rennet from a bottle but in Australia (1960s) they sold fruit flavoured junket tablets which I think were dissolved in the milk. It didn't seem right.

[Pepper Pig]

[StokeySue]

Pearce Duff’s blancmange powder still on Sainsbury’s website

[Pepper Pig]

It doesn't come up much on cookery programmes!

[earthmaiden]

I use it to make a common sort of trifle at Christmas sometimes but only want the pink ones so the others have to be used up as custard. I prefer to make chocolate using cornflour and cocoa as my mother used to, it's more chocolately. My mother used to serve it hot and we called it chocolate pudding, it was a treat.

Apparently, one day in the shop (1960s rural village), several women were complaining that they had run out of ideas for easy puddings (i.e. a hot sweet course). At that time, Norfolk housewives were expected to serve a hot pudding to the menfolk so something like blancmange made earlier would not be acceptable unless for high summer or Sunday tea. My mother suggested her 'chocolate pudding', which, as it was served hot might be acceptable and was very easy. Amazingly, it was greeted enthusiastically by the various menfolk and was added to the repertoire in several households. (Even better with a lump of chocolate sponge of course!!).

[nursemimi]

In this household the dish is done quite different
first in a large skillet melt 1/2 stick butter saute 2 peeled and sliced thin large yellow onions, add a carton of fresh sliced mushrooms
cook slowly till onions are soft and lightly caramelized, add 1/4 cup flour cook for about 5 minutes add 2 cans cram of mushroom soup, 1 soup can of water 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce and a couple of drops of Tabasco sauce, and 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese simmer slowly till cheese melts. In a large buttered baking tin place 2 bags of frozen green beans cover with the sauce sprinkle a bit of shredded cheese on top cover and bake in a 350 oven for 1 hour uncover for the last 15 minutes.
My family loves this. Especially if served with a nice baked ham.