News and Views:

What the Locals Know:
Moody’s Diner, Waldoboro, Maine

How Hot Is Hot? A Handy Reference

The Green Bean Queen

What the Locals Know:
Moody’s Diner, Waldoboro, Maine

The Moody family has owned and run the place since the 1920s, starting with three roadside cabins and soon adding a small restaurant that served breakfast and dinner to travelers. With her husband P.B., Bertha Moody raised nine children, fed thousands of hungry travelers and local people, fried enough doughnuts to reach the moon, shucked clams practically in her sleep, and taught the next generation how to cook. Today, the gravy at Moody’s is made from a recipe, not poured from a can. Turkeys are roasted upside down so the breast meat doesn’t dry out. New England Boiled Dinner is on the menu every Thursday. And the pies are out of this world.

Here’s the diner’s recipe for their silky custard pie, as printed in their cookbook, What’s Cooking at Moody’s Diner (1989). The recipe says it makes one pie, but you might want to have two unbaked pie shells handy.

Moody’s Custard Pie
8 eggs
1 level tablespoon flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
5 cups milk

In a large bowl, beat the eggs with flour, salt, sugar, and nutmeg. Stir in milk and pour batter through a strainer into [two?] deep, unbaked, 9" pie shells. Bake for 15 minutes at 400°F, then reduce heat to 325°F and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until custard is set.

How Hot Is Hot? A Handy Reference

Temperatures
Oven	Candy-Making	Deep Fat Frying	Oven Conversions
200°F to 300°F Slow Oven	238°F Thread Stage or Soft Ball	350°F to 360°F French-fried Potatoes	Fahrenheit	Celsius (Centigrade) Approximate
325°F to 375°F Moderate Oven	250°F Firm Ball	360°F Doughnuts	300°F	150°C
400°F to 450°F Hot Oven	260°F to 270°F Hard Ball	360°F to 370°F Fish and Meat, Croquettes and Fritters	325°F	160°C
450°F to 550°F Very Hot Oven	290°F Brittle	380°F to 390°F Potato Chips	350°F	175°C
			375°F	190°C
			400°F	200°C
			425°F	220°C
			450°F	230°C

Printer Version

The Green Bean Queen

Prep Time: 10 min.
Cook Time: 30 min.

1 can (10 3/4 oz.) Campbell's® Cream of MushroomSoup
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp. soy sauce
Dash pepper
4 cups cooked cut green beans
1 1/3 cups French's® French Fried Onions

MIX soup, milk, soy, pepper, beans and 2/3 cup onions in 1 1/2-qt. casserole.
BAKE at 350°F. for 25 min. or until hot.
STIR. Sprinkle with remaining onions. Bake 5 min. Serves 6.

If there is a person out there who has never heard of Green Bean Casserole, here’s a piece of essential American culinary lore for you. Starting in about 1955, this casserole — invented in Campbell Soup’s test kitchens — began appearing on dinner tables in American homes with what some would describe as alarming frequency. The dish, which combines frozen green beans (French-style), a can of cream of mushroom soup, milk, soy sauce, black pepper, and a can of French-fried onion rings, might be the one recipe that most Americans hold in common. It became Campbell’s most requested recipe; it’s still on the soup can label, although it has migrated to the inside; and somewhere between 20 and 30 million Americans ate the casserole during the recent holiday season. Some might have eaten it more than once, since it’s a staple of potluck suppers and family get-togethers.

The woman who came up with the recipe — Dorcas Reilly of Camden, New Jersey — was a young home economist who managed the test kitchen. She knew that convenience foods were popular in postwar America, and figured the combination of green beans and mushroom soup would be a winner. The remaining ingredients were an inspired addition. Since only five or six ingredients would fit on the label, the recipe couldn’t be too complicated.

Thanks, Dorcas Reilly! You may have come up with the one way to get kids to eat their green beans. You are the Green Bean Queen.

For this and other recipes using Campbell’s soup, go to www.campbellsoup.com.

Back to Top