Cecily Brownstone, Thanksgiving & the Green Bean Casserole
Cecily Brownstone was the longtime food editor at the Associated Press who is included in The Food Section: Newspaper Women and the Culinary Community. I think of her every Thanksgiving because of her connection to the green bean casserole. We are celebrating Thanksgiving early this year since we will spend the holiday at the beach.
According to a 2007 post from Saveur magazine:
“It wasn’t until 1955, however, that the dish’s most steadfast incarnation entered the scene. This enduring formula, one that many home cooks still use, called for a trinity of convenience products: canned Durkee or French’s fried onions, Green Giant canned green beans, and Campbell’s condensed cream of mushroom soup, usually accompanied by milk, soy sauce, and a dash of pepper. It was invented by the Campbell’s Soup Company, which, as it still does, emblazoned its soup can labels with recipes that featured the company’s products in a starring role. According to Cindy Ayers, the vice president of Campbell’s Kitchens, the recipe was first tested in order to fulfill a request from Cecily Brownstone, the food editor at the Associated Press, who sought help in reproducing a green bean casserole she’d tasted at a press dinner. “We partnered with a lot of writers back then,” Ayers says. “It was a pretty common practice at the time.”
The dinner that Brownstone had attended took place at the home of John Snively, a wealthy citrus rancher in Florida, and his wife, May. The conceit of the event was that the Snivelys had served a replica of the evening’s menu to Iranian royalty: Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi and his wife, Queen Soraya, who had recently paid a visit to the ranch. Mrs. Snively had presented a memorable meal of brunswick stew and a delicious green bean casserole made with cream sauce and mushrooms. The queen, Mrs. Snively told the assembled members of the press, had apparently loved the casserole and “had eaten [it] with gusto”. With that, Brownstone had her story and, thanks to some help from the Campbell’s Soup test kitchens, her featured dish. The article she wrote was headlined “Beans Fit for an Iranian Queen”, and the recipe that ran with it was dubbed “Beans and Stuff”, which is how the Snivelys’ less than silver-tongued butler had allegedly announced the dish.
Cecily Brownstone was the one who should get credit for the 1950s rediscovery of the dish. Her writing about the dish is still available online. Yet,the comment about newspaper food editors (in Cecily’s case, a wire service) partnering with food companies has always bothered me.
I was happy to read the following segments from Cecily’s oral history, available at the Fales Library at NYU.
“I stayed away from food manufacturers in my A.P. days.” (pg 14)
and
“I didn’t use those Campbell’s recipes.” (pg 15)
However Brownstone introduced the dish to Campbell’s, it was not the partnership previously described. Her wire service followed strict ethical guidelines that Cecily said she followed during her career. Details about Cecily’s papers and her oral history can be found here.
Cecily Brownstone is central to the story of the dish although she is absent from the History Channel’s version of the Green Bean Casserole.
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