Long - Green Bean Casserole (1)

The Green Bean article by Long raised a couple of issues about how traditions are introduced into a folk foodway: through aesthetics and ethos.

Long talks about industrialization having an impact on food cultures throughout the world not just in Ohio where the green bean casserole is popular. There are so many traditions that we take for granted and that we do not realize have been recently introduced through access to new products or product preservation and the mass marketing of those products. I was particularly struck by the use of canned ingredients that create not only this recipe but many quotidian food traditions. One such in Canada that always struck me as rather ‘odd’ or ‘quirky’ is the use of baked beans as a breakfast side dish in Newfoundland.

Because of the way Long describes the ‘training’ of tastes that creates a culture ‘that accepts commercial and processed foods as the normal and right way for foods to be” I decided to look up the history of canning. I had assumed it had been around ‘forever’ but in fact it was invented in 1809 (with, funnily enough, the can opener being invented 30 years later). The Ohio area houses processing plants and canning factories so people in those areas would be inclined to adopt this new method of food preparation even though they were traditionally agricultural areas. But during that era many places were going through their own industrial revolutions and these ‘new’ foods were being introduced everywhere and Campbell’s and other companies were creating recipes in order to sell their products. People would try them and often incorporate them into their food events.

It is rather odd to think that ‘tradition’ comes out of a can—with the folkloristic aspect being contained within the aesthetics of variation. People adopt a new food, from these corporations or previously from the upper classes, incorporate it into their community and then proceed to make it their own. Campbell’s states that the green bean casserole is one of the most popular recipes downloaded from their web site and a couple of years ago I came across the recipe and tried it. I tried the original recipe and variations but it always seemed to be a congealed mess of clumps of cream and soggy onion rings. Perhaps because I was not brought up in a ‘casserole culture’, I could not find a way to ritualize this dish; the gustatory aesthetics could not overcome the unpleasant visual aspect.

The only Campbell’s soup used consistently in my family was the ‘tomato’ (for everything from cold day soup to spaghetti and meatloaf sauces) any other soup was considered exotic.