For the holidays, just pass the green bean casserole

Karina Bland is off today. This column is from Oct. 26, 2018:

Dorcas Reilly died of Alzheimer’s disease at age 92.

You might not recognize her name, but you’ve probably eaten her greenbean casserole.

It is the most popular recipe ever to come out of the Campbell Soup Co.’s test kitchen.

Mrs. Reilly created the dish in 1955 to make the most of two ingredients found in practically every pantry at the time: Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and green beans.

She mixed in just three more ingredients: milk, soy sauce and crunchy fried onions. It was the height of sophistication. Really.

At the time, the way to make vegetables edible was to drown them in Velveeta cheese sauce. Home cooks creamed spinach, scalloped potatoes and boiled the hell out of string beans.

Mrs. Reilly called her new creation “Green Bean Bake.”

In my family, we call it aunt Vickie’s green beans because she was the first to bring it to our house. She got the recipe from her mother, who found it on a Campbell’s soup can.

We went without it for a few years after Aunt Vickie and Uncle Virgil divorced. His second wife made it with French-cut green beans. (Seriously, what was she thinking?)

The cousins took it over and added two cups of shredded cheese.

I love everything about it: its gooey texture, crunchy topping and appallingly high sodium content. Sure, it could trigger a heart attack if you ate it once a week, but we make it only at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Mrs. Reilly’s green-bean casserole now graces an estimated 30 million American tables at the holidays, according to the soup company.

I think I know why. We’ve made it over the years because our moms, aunts or grandmothers made it.

It tastes like the holidays.