The typical Thanksgiving dishes seem to have been the same forever: turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, casseroles, and pumpkin pie. But the reality is that these foods weren’t just passed down to us from the heavens as the standard Thanskgiving menu. In fact, some of them are relatively new to the table and have some rather surprising origins.
For example, have you ever considered how unusual a dish sweet potato and marshmallow casserole is? Who even came up with that? Well, the marshmallow company. That’s right, the Cracker Jack company published the recipe for the first time in 1917 and it’s grown to become a staple ever since.
Something similar happened with green bean casserole, one of whose main ingredients isn’t just cream of mushroom soup, it’s Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup. That’s all thanks to Dorcas Reilly who, in 1955, did a very good job at the task given to her by Campbell’s to create recipes that utilized Campbell’s products. Today, Campbell’s estimates that 30 percent of their cream of mushroom soup is bought specifically for use in a green bean casserole.
The more you know!
