Benjamin Law starts a deep, philosophical debate over the definition of ‘casserole’

Does a stew, lasagne or pasta bake count?

Can the Internet settle this issue? Source: Benito Martin

Benjamin Law’s Twitter followers probably weren’t expecting to have their entire lives upended in 2016, when the writer posed the following question.

Really makes you think. 

Most white families have casserole night. This writer’s white family certainly did. Every Wednesday was “hamburger casserole night”: we’d be served a miscellaneous, oven-baked dish of macaroni pasta, beef mince, tomato-based pasta sauce and cheese (my memory is hazy on the vegetables). It was both insanely delicious and completely undefinable.

Benjamin Law, it seems, has white people stumped.

Does this count as a casserole? Source: SBS Food

Does casserole = stew, as Lucy Cormack and Jane Caro would have us believe?

Can this qualify as a casserole? Source: Pati's Mexican Table

Or is it more of a pasta bake?

Can a casserole even be a pasta bake?

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

What about this? (Anson Smart) Source: Anson Smart

Two years later, and white people are just now licking their wounds, trying to get over their casserole confusion – the perfect time, according to Benjamin Law, to crack the conversation wide open once more.

Or is this a casserole? Source: Maja Smend

And now everyone is just as confused, if not more so, than they were in 2016.

This time around, though, we at least have some Twitter users attempting to answer the question in earnest.

So, where have we landed? Are casseroles culinary enigmas, cooling stoically on the bench while we try in vain to categorise them? Will anyone step up to write a casserole guidebook? Perhaps, as long as our mid-week, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink dinners taste great, it doesn’t matter what we call them.

Truly a conundrum of the highest order. Thanks, Benjamin Law.

Have you caught casserole fever? Check out SBS Food’s best casserole recipes here – definition not included.