"America's béchamel:" How Campbell's canned cream of mushroom soup became a Thanksgiving staple

Every November, the rhythm and layout of my local grocery store is swiftly, but methodically altered. Whatever nearly-stale Halloween candy left in stock is pushed further and further down the catch-all discount aisle, while the endcaps swell with competing bags and boxes of stuffing mix. “Busy preparing for the big day?” laminated posters hung near the butcher’s counter inquire. “Let us handle the turkey.” 

Then, in a fluorescent-lit clearing near the dairy refrigerator, a pair of stockers spent two shifts constructing a pyramid made of cans of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. It’s taller than I am and the slick, classic red and white labels create a festive pattern, the whole thing a monument to the soup’s now-intrinsic place in holiday preparations.

Of course Campbell’s wasn’t the first to invent cream of mushroom soup; food historians speculate that its creation was a natural extension of French béchamel, a velvety sauce made by whisking milk into a roux until the mixture thickens and becomes smooth. However, they were the company that canned and commercialized the product in such a way that it has become a holiday staple, with 50% of their annual sales of cream of mushroom soup taking place between November and January of each year. 

Founded in 1869 by Joseph A. Campbell and Abraham Anderson in Camden, New Jersey, Campbell's Soup Company began as a small canning business, producing a range of preserved goods such as tomatoes, vegetables, jellies, condiments and soups. A pivotal moment came for the company, and future Thanksgivings across the continent, in 1897 when chemist John T. Dorrance, who was the nephew of a company executive, invented a method to condense soup by removing water, leading to the introduction of condensed soups. 

Fittingly, when Campbell’s first introduced their condensed cream of mushroom soup to consumers in 1934, it was the first of their products to be marketed as both a soup and a sauce. To further reinforce this point, the company tasked their home economics department — also based at Campbell’s headquarters in Camden — with creating a recipe for a feature that would appear in the Associated Press in 1955. There were two stipulations: The recipe had to be based on ingredients that the average home cook would have on hand, and it had to include Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. 

Dorcas Reilly, who was one of the first full-time members of Campbell’s home economics department, took the challenge in stride. After a few casserole prototypes that included ingredients like celery salt and cubed ham, Reilly eventually settled on the final recipe for her “Green Bean Bake.” It was made with five simple ingredients: canned or frozen green beans; half a cup of 2% milk; one teaspoon of soy sauce; a healthy handful of fried onions (traditionally French’s); and, obviously, one can of cream of mushroom soup. 

Initially, the recipe was positioned as just a normal weeknight side — and a popular one at that. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Reilly, who created other midcentury comfort favorites including Campbell’s tuna noodle casserole and Sloppy Joe’s made with tomato soup, was once quoted as saying: “We all thought this is very nice, [etcetera], and then when we got the feelings of the consumer, we were really kinda pleasantly shocked.” 

The “Green Bean Bake” really took off as a holiday dish once the name was slightly altered to the now-famous Green Bean Casserole and printed on the side of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup cans. 

In the ensuing decades, both condensed cream of mushroom soup and the numerous casseroles which it thickens and binds have suffered some reputational decline. Where canned condensed soups once represented the height of industrialized food technology and teased promise of weeknight convenience and freedom from at least some domestic labor, now there’s a sense that using them as an ingredient is low-class, lazy or both. However, I’d argue that assumption is worth reconsidering. 

In his 2008 article “Thanksgiving Slumming with Cream of Mushroom Soup,” The Houston Press’ Robb Walsh discussed coming to terms with the fact that Campbell’s had its place even in the most gourmet kitchens on occasion. 

“Some time back, when I was a more earnest foodie, cream of mushroom soup was anathema to me,” Walsh writes. “I had eaten gallons of the stuff in my childhood. My mother made everything from tuna casserole to beef burgundy with it. But I had higher principles. The red and white can was nowhere to be found in my pantry. And then I tried to make creamed spinach.” 

Intuitively combining fresh spinach and heavy cream over heat produced disastrous results, so Walsh reached out to a chef friend who recommended he just use cream of mushroom soup and frozen spinach, instead. “I was shocked. This guy worked in a famous fine dining restaurant. And he was recommending mushroom soup?” Walsh said. “Then he said something I’ve never forgotten, ‘Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup is America’s béchamel.’”

This is a point of view that’s echoed in food historian and folklorist Lucy Long’s more academic writing on the subject. 

“Mass-produced, commercial foods have been a significant part of American food culture since industrialization enabled their development in the late 1800s,” Long wrote. “While they seem like the antithesis of home-cooked folk foods, they have frequently been incorporated into family and community tradition. Green bean casserole illustrates how such a product can become a meaningful tradition that expresses both regional culture and individual creativity. It suggests the processes by which all of us adapt commercial foods to fit our own histories, needs and tastes.”

That’s the reason that, at least according to Campbell’s, 20,000 American families will make green bean casserole this holiday season — which means that at least 20,000 cans of cream of mushroom soup will be sold this holiday season, too, cementing its spot as an unsung Thanksgiving staple.