As you’re thinking about your Thanksgiving menu — no, it’s not too soon — you might plan a memorial tribute around the founder of a staple that finds its way to many of your tables, the green bean casserole. Dorcas Bates Reilly, who created the recipe back in 1955 for Campbell Soup Co., has died at age 92.
Reilly had no idea when she combined two ingredients commonly found in Americans’ pantries — green beans and Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup — that the conncoction would catch on, or that it would become the most popular recipe ever to come out of Campbell’s corporate test kitchen in Camden, New Jersey. Last year alone, some 2.7 million visitors to the Campbell’s website searched for the iconic recipe, the company said.
Reilly died of Alzheimer’s disease on Monday, Oct. 15, at a Camden care facility.
Originally called the Green Bean Bake, the recipe was tweaked over the years and often is topped with crispy French-fried onion rings. More than 20 million Americans are expected to serve it this Thanksgiving, Campbell’s said.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Dorcas Reilly, the creator of one of the most beloved American recipes, the Green Bean Casserole,” the company said in a statement. “Dorcas was an incredible woman whose legacy will live on for years to come. She will be missed by her Campbell colleagues and all those who were impacted by her creativity and generous spirit.”
The recipe has had such an impact on American culture that the original recipe card was donated by Campbell’s in 2002 to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, although Reilly herself wasn’t inducted. Other artifacts there include Thomas A. Edison’s light bulb.
“She was extremely humble about the whole thing,” her son, Thomas B. Reilly, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “As a kid growing up, we never really discussed it. It didn’t become a talking point until the recipe was put in the Inventors Hall of Fame.
“I think she was surprised,” he said. “I think she was even more surprised at how much of a big deal it became. She was not a flashy person. She didn’t bask in the limelight. She just went in and did her job every day, like most blue-collar people.”
In fact, Reilly told the Associated Press in a 2005 interview marking the 50th anniversary of the recipe that there were so many she worked on that it didn’t particularly stand out. She’s also responsible for some lesser-known recipes using Campbell soups, including tomato soup cake, a sloppy Joe concoction, and a tuna noodle casserole.
“But she was best known as grandmother of the Green Bean Casserole,” her husband, Thomas H. Reilly, told The Inquirer.
A 1947 graduate of Philadelphia’s Drexel Institute of Technology, now Drexel University, she was one of the first full-time employees of Campbell’s Home Economics department, the company said in a tribute on its website. She married in 1959 and left Campbell’s in 1961 to become a full-time mom. She returned 20 years later to become the manager of Campbell’s Kitchen, remaining there until her retirement in 1988.
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The recipe, which Campbell’s calls “the mother of all comfort foods,” is easy — only a few ingredients — and takes only 10 minutes to prepare and 30 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees. To make it, combine:
Her funeral will be held Saturday in Haddonfield, New Jersey. Read more here.
Photo: In this Nov. 15, 2005 file photo, a Green Bean Casserole sits in the foreground as Dorcas Reilly prepares another at the Campbell Soup Co. corporate kitchen in Camden, N.J. Reilly died on Monday, Oct. 15, 2018 and her family will celebrate her life on Saturday, Oct. 27 in the town where she lived, Haddonfield, N.J. Reilly was a Campbell Soup kitchen supervisor in 1955 when she combined green beans and cream of mushroom soup, topped with crunchy fried onions, for an Associated Press feature. It is the most popular recipe ever to come out of the corporate kitchen at Campbell Soup. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)